Pulitzer Prize-Winning Photojournalist Exhibit At Oceanside Museum of Art

OCEANSIDE, CA — Oceanside Museum of Art celebrates the storied career of the Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, Don Bartletti with an exhibition featuring photography captured throughout his over 40-year career. Don Bartletti: Elusive Moments-Enduring Stories opened on January 22 and runs through May 1.

Don Bartletti spent his career traveling the globe, visiting more than 23 countries to tell the story of individuals who are often silenced or go unnoticed. His work aims to promote a greater understanding of causes and consequences of illegal immigration into the United States from Mexico and Central America.

Bartletti’s work has most notably been featured throughout California including in the San Diego Union-Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. Now retired, he remains dedicated to the causes and effects of economic migration across the southern border of the U.S. and within nearly every state in Mexico.

The images featured in this exhibition give viewers a look behind the lens through Bartletti’s perspective with images capturing people and moments in time from around the world, representing every range of emotion. This exhibition is a reflection and celebration of Bartletti’s storied career and invites the viewer to go on a “scavenger hunt” and become the storyteller of his images. Every wrinkle, tear, hug, and smile have a story behind it, and many of these stories are hiding in plain sight.

The Patch took a behind-the-scenes tour with Don Bartletti during the docent training for his exhibition at OMA. Delve into the stories that accompany the stunning photos in the exhibit.

"It's really a privilege to have my photos in such a beautiful place and right next door to my hometown in Vista.

The pictures I chose span from 1975 to last year. I think the important thing you want to point out to people is those captions are gonna tell more than you thought you knew about the picture. But it doesn't matter even if you don't read the caption, look at it and get a feeling for it."

Chiapas Racers (Chiapas, Mexico - August 3, 2000)

"I chose this picture to be the first one they see as it's one of the most endearing ones of my whole 50-year career and because it has universal appeal. I've gotten emails from 20 different countries. People just admire you know the obvious, that beautiful girl with her curls flying in the wind and little butt off the rump of the horse. There's a lesson in the picture if you look at it carefully, it's not just two beautiful kids and a green background. It's probably their daddy's horse because his boot doesn't touch the stirrup. They're probably somewhat impoverished because the reigns are frayed nylon.

But look at how bold and upright he's sitting. That's what Diana, my wife has pointed out to me, he's totally in control. So here are these two little kids and I don't know if they do this routinely because the train comes by the freight train unscheduled maybe two or three times a week. The caption explains this view of these children as I'm sitting on top of a moving freight train. The backstory is everybody around me on top of that boxcar was clapping and whistling and shouting because it was a joyful 30 seconds.

So number one, it's a beautiful picture. Number two. It's a lesson in how to look at a picture. You can look at so many things to see the vortex on the back of the horse. It's in a circle because I'm using a slow shutter speed that captures them clearly because they're running at the same speed as the train, but the slow shutter speed blurs the background, which is passing by much faster.

It was part of the Pulitzer prize-winning series in the Los Angeles Times titled Enrique's Journey. It was about a Central American boy whose mother left him when he was four. It's almost a rite of passage for Central American boys when they get old enough and brave enough they'll ride that train to get around immigration checkpoints. Enrique was 17 at the time. But I wasn't riding the train with Enrique. I found him at the Texas border on the Rio Grande."

104 Years of Separation (Camp Pendleton, CA - June 12, 1975)

"I took this next photo at my very first newspaper job for the Vista Press. I was a Vietnam vet and had only been home from the war for a few years when the collapse of South Vietnam happened and refugees were sent to Camp Pendleton. They lived in tent cities and among those that the Marine Corps let us talk to and photograph was this 109-year-old woman and her little five-year-old great, great-granddaughter.

So the beauty I was looking for and what attracted me to this scene was the obvious difference. The generational difference, the lines of her face, trace her age and her background. But the story got incredible 40 years later, just about when I was going to retire from the LA Times. This is one of the first pictures I ever took in my career. And one of the last pictures I took is right here.

The LA Times reporter who had been an evacuee during that fall of Saigon became a journalist and she found this little girl 40 years later living in Fresno California working as a registered nurse. So we arranged a meeting with her and it was really great. We didn't recognize each other. We look at each other and we've all changed 40 years but each of us remembers where we were on June 12, 1975."

Enrique's Journey (Teotihuacan, Mexico - September 11, 2000)

"This photo became the front page picture for the six-part series in the L. A. Times that ran in 2003. The train is going about 50 mph because it's a solid roadbed. All the cars are filled with gravel, sand or something. This boy and me and about 60 other kids and men had gotten on in Vera Cruz on the coast of Mexico. So nearly everybody was dressed in either a T-shirt or shorts or you know, it was so weird.

This is just as dawn broke and off to my right about 10 miles further along is this giant pyramid that figures heavily in the history of Mexico and is almost 7000 ft above sea level and it was cold. Really cold. I came up behind this little boy and he was shivering, sniffling and crying and it hit me like somebody kicked me in the head. But it became the lead picture for that series.

This is important in my long story of the causes and consequences of illegal immigration. The story is huge in this country, especially this part of it, the United States. I was sent back to Honduras in 2014 to try to translate what caused 60,000 Children under the age of 18 to end up on the Rio Grande River. Well, violence is so severe and horrible in Honduras that mothers who are paying smugglers, fathers were trying to get their kids up there. So I had hired a crime reporter from the local newspaper who know all the ins and outs. He suggested, to tell the story, go to the morgue because dozens and dozens of bodies come to the morgue. But I wasn't prepared for this.

I went into the morgue chapel and there was a couple sitting there looking at pictures of that girl when she was alive. While the parents waited inside this little girl's body was wheeled out on the stainless steel table out of the morgue just like another delivery package.

Her uncles brought along what was probably her first communion dress and spent half an hour preparing the body to put in the casket. It was so emotionally charged and then it started raining. We're outside the morgue in the loading dock behind and there's no overhead cover, just a tree and it's raining."

Cosmic Outfielder (Camp Pendleton, CA - March 23, 1996)

"Now I didn't pick only sad stories because I've had some incredible experiences in my career. And one thing that I love to do is have an interest in the cosmos but not in the moon and the planet and eclipses and sunrises sets by themselves but their relationship to us. So this is one of the two brightest comets to ever come close to earth in the last 100 years. This thing had a tail. It was five hands long once your eyes got used to it. So we're out there in the desert and trying to do something different. My son said, hey dad, I can almost reach up and touch it. Bingo.

This photo was bought by Life magazine back when they were still running and a doctor from New York sent me a nasty letter saying this is a fake picture. I don't usually get in this detail but you might want to relate it. We're in total darkness. J is posing. I hit the strobe. The strobe illuminates him so he's up there. But I left the camera shelter open for 35 more seconds. Very dim back there. Now the strobe illuminated in a fraction of a second. And I said you've got to stay there, stay there, stay there Freezing, freezing. So after about maybe 25 seconds I told him to put his arms down and he was like this and then came back a little bit. So what was behind after the strobe went off he was still a black silhouette and then when he dropped his arms, what was hidden behind his sleeves were these stars. It's a mind blower, one piece of film."

Endeavour's Last Mission (Los Angeles, CA - October 13, 2012)

"This is Endeavour's last journey. The space shuttle Endeavor flew around the world 159 million miles and after it was retired it was put on the back of a 747 in Florida and flown to Los Angeles very ceremoniously. It took three days to get there from the airport to the museum so I rented a hotel room on the fourth floor here looking straight down and that's one of the views I got from a long way away with a 300MM telephoto lens.

The incredible thing was it went through some sketchy neighborhoods and everybody came out and nobody tried to touch it or throw rocks at it or spray painted anything. It was the most joyous three days."

California Burning (Yosemite, CA - August 25, 2013)

"This is the story that loosely defines global warning and the lingering drought in California and what I call California's 5th climate season, fire season. It's every year. This is inside the boundary of Yosemite National Park where the federal government leases grazing land about 20 miles from the Yosemite Valley. The fire never reached there but it burned close to 150 sq mi of Stanislaus National Forest. So I embedded with these firemen from El Dorado Fire Department. There were fire agencies from all over the western United States trying to get this thing out.

I had taken fire training and I'm dressed in the fireproof suit and I had a helmet and a gas mask. But one thing that has been pointed out to me, if you look carefully at this unintentional silhouette looks like a person that almost looks like a fire man. The cow was one of hundreds and these guys were able to corral and move those cows onto evergreen road, ironic. It was named evergreen and everything just disappeared in a fraction of a second. Here I show a picture of firefighters because the embers were blowing they were struggling to keep putting them out so it wouldn't spread. So it was and it became the front page of the LA Times."

To view the Don Bartletti: Elusive Moments-Enduring Stories exhibition visit the Oceanside Museum of Art through May 1, 2022.

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