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March 4, 2013 – Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Craig F. Walker of The Denver Post will be among the speakers at a two-day conference, “Documents of War: the Ethics and Challenges of Visual Storytelling,” exploring the role of photojournalism and film documentaries in the context of armed conflict, on March 8 and 9 at Allegheny College.

The conference – which is free and open to the public and requires no preregistration — helps inaugurate a new academic program at the college, Journalism in the Public Interest. Like the program, the conference will explore the complex social and ethical responsibilities that come with producing and consuming the “news,” in this case, news as visually rendered, sometimes disturbingly so.

The conference will also feature presentations by author and filmmaker Ken Kobré; Allegheny professor and international journalist Cheryl Hatch and University of Alaska Fairbanks photojournalism student JR Ancheta; and filmmakers Pamela Yates and Paco de Onis, director and producer, respectively, of the award-winning documentary “Granito,” about the Guatemalan civil war.

All events will be held in the Vukovich Center for Communication Arts at Allegheny College, and all presentations will include time for questions and answers. Also free and open to the public on Saturday are a breakfast buffet for all participants at 9 a.m., a deli lunch at noon and hors d’oeuvres at 6 p.m.

The schedule includes:

• A screening of the film “A Deadline Every Second,” by Ken Kobré, which follows the work routine of 12 Associated Press Photographers, at 7 p.m. on Friday. A panel discussion with conference presenters will follow.

• A presentation of photographs by Cheryl Hatch and JR Ancheta titled “Generations of War: From Africa to Afghanistan” at 10 a.m. on Saturday.

• A showing by Craig F. Walker of his two Pulitzer Prize-winning photo essays, “American Soldier” and “Welcome Home,” at 1 p.m. on Saturday.

• A screening of the documentary “Granito: How To Nail a Dictator” at 7 p.m. on Saturday.

In addition to the presentations, an exhibit of photos by U.S. Army photographer Raymond D’Addario will be shown from the Nuremberg Collection of the Robert H. Jackson Center. A leading lawyer of the New Deal Era, Jackson served as the chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal.

The Documents of War conference is sponsored by the college’s Center for Political Participation, the Office of the Provost, the Robert H. Jackson Center and The Campus, the Allegheny student newspaper.

For more information, contact Rich Sayer at rsayer@allegheny.edu, Cheryl Hatch at chatch@allegheny.edu or Mary Solberg at msolberg@allegheny.edu, or call 814-332-6202. More information can also be found on the Facebook Events page for Documents of War.