Missouri Photojournalism Hall of Fame will induct six in November

Six acclaimed photojournalists will expand the ranks of the Missouri Photojournalism Hall of Fame during a Thursday, Nov. 12 induction ceremony at the State Historical Society of Missouri’s headquarters in downtown Columbia.

Marking the 22nd group of inductees since the founding of the Hall of Fame in 2005, this year’s honorees are the late Sol Studna; Brian Storm of Los Gatos, Calif.; Laurie Skrivan of St. Louis; Edward McCain of Columbia; Robert Cohen of St. Louis; and Jackie Bell of Columbia.

Photographs from the inductees will be on display during the 4 p.m. ceremony and reception in the Sam B. Cook Hall at the Center for Missouri Studies, the State Historical Society of Missouri’s location in downtown Columbia. These photographs will join the Hall of Fame’s collection of work by previous inductees.

The Missouri Photojournalism Hall of Fame was founded at the urging of Bill Miller Sr., former publisher of the Washington Missourian newspaper, to recognize outstanding contributors to visual communication with ties to Missouri.

Information about the Missouri Photojournalism Hall of Fame and previous inductees can be found online at photojournalismhalloffame.org. You can RSVP for the Nov. 12 induction ceremony online at bit.ly/mophotoj or by email at kfortier@mopress.com.

Sol Studna

The late Sol Studna was a photographer for The Kansas City Star for nearly 40 years, providing unmatched photography of people and events across Missouri and Kansas. Retiring in March 1971, his career included freelancing, aerial photography and the evolution of newspaper photography from black and white to color.

Described by those who knew him as a “compact bundle of energy,” Studna enjoyed a reputation for resourcefulness and intrepidity. Himself a pilot, much of the aerial photography run by The Star during Studna’s tenure was made by him, sometimes to his financial detriment. It was reported at Studna’s retirement that he claimed to still be owed $10 from the newspaper for payment to a group of Civilian Conservation Corps youth who carried his airplane out of a muddy field in northern Kansas while he was covering flooding in the area.

Studna was willing to take on whatever assignment was necessary, such as “stealth photography” of voter fraud perpetrated by Tom Pendergast’s political machine, despite the threats to his life, limb and lens.

Among Studna’s many claims to fame was that he had photographed every U.S. president beginning with Herbert Hoover and through Richard Nixon. One of his major accomplishments was getting Franklin D. Roosevelt and famed Kansas journalist William Allen White together for a picture while the former campaigned through the Midwest and in spite of their well-known dislike of each other.

Studna’s work was also instrumental in chronicling the construction of the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library & Museum in Independence. He died Nov. 30, 1998, after retiring to Mexico with his wife.

Brian Storm

Brian Storm is considered by many to be a visionary, understanding early on how photojournalism would evolve with the rise of technology and the internet in particular. After receiving his bachelor’s in photojournalism from College of the Ozarks in Point Lookout, Missouri, Storm earned his master’s in photojournalism from the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

At MU, Storm’s thesis focused on creating interactive CD-ROMs, which served as the basis of the first iteration of his company, MediaStorm, founded in 1994 in Columbia. After six months, the company pivoted to the internet where Storm launched one of the first photography focused websites.

From 1995 to 2002, Storm was the first director of multimedia at MSNBC.com. In 1998, his team created the site’s The Week in Pictures feature to showcase visual journalism on one of the world’s leading 24-hour news websites. After MSNBC.com, Storm spent two years with Corbis, a digital media agency founded by Bill Gates, where he oversaw global strategy for news, sports, entertainment and historical collections and the photographers tasked with creating in-depth multimedia products.

In 2005, MediaStorm as it stands today was founded as a film production and interactive design studio that publishes diverse narratives, offers advanced storytelling, builds publishing tools and collaborates with a diverse group of clients. The company represents Storm’s earliest visions of what he saw as the future of photojournalism, helping storytellers win four Emmy awards and 17 nominations, an Edward R. Murrow Award and many more accolades while going beyond traditional photojournalism.

Laurie Skrivan

A lifelong Missourian, Laurie Skrivan turned an internship at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch into a 28-year career covering every aspect of life, news and sports in the region. Consistently, Skrivan has been a principled and passionate “voice for the voiceless,” representing society’s underserved and bringing out the dignity and pride in her subjects as they face daily challenges.

From chronicling the rise of “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” in the aftermath of the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, following the 2014 killing of Michael Brown to the cycle of gun violence plaguing St. Louis to the literal toxins poisoning the region’s children, Skrivan documented it all with honesty and humanity.

In a career of state and national awards, a high point for Skrivan was receiving the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News Photography for the work that she and her fellow Post-Dispatch photographers did in covering the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, following the 2014 killing of Michael Brown. In 2017, she received the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism award for her coverage of toxic stress on families, work that would be used by Saint Louis University to teach medical students.

While her powerful images helped raise awareness affecting the St. Louis region, she also helped residents celebrate, with her coverage including the St. Louis Rams’ Super Bowl XXXIV win in 2000, the St. Louis Blues winning the 2019 Stanley Cup and decades of St. Louis Cardinals games and post-season appearances. Perhaps most importantly, Skrivan was known for her focus on highlighting the fans and what sports mean to the St. Louis community.

Edward McCain

As part journalist and part librarian, Edward McCain plays a unique role in preserving born-digital news at the Journalism Digital News Archive (JDNA). His interest in journalism got a jump-start at age 16, when he took photos of a dramatic rescue of accident victims whose car had been swept down a river. The Independence Examiner, McCain’s local newspaper, published a five-column photo shot by the teen on its front page.

After attending the Missouri School of Journalism, McCain received his master’s in information resources and library science with a certificate in digital information management from the University of Arizona. While in Arizona, McCain worked for the Tucson Citizen for several years, covering everything from the mundane to the tragic 1986 crash of a passenger airplane and helicopter over the Grand Canyon.

Experience working at the Las Cruces Sun-News in New Mexico and The Midland (Texas) Reporter-Telegram also contributed to McCain recognizing that digital news archiving is necessary for the industry to grow. As the current interim head of the JDNA, McCain works with decision-makers in the news industry and thought-leaders in information science to strengthen and broaden the network of stakeholders working toward preserving digital news archives.

With digital preservation a common concern for proponents of journalism’s increasing online presence, McCain through his role at the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri works with the university’s journalism lab, including the Columbia Missourian, KBIA-FM radio and KOMU-TV, to develop new technologies and methodologies that benefit digital news archives on a broad scale.

McCain is also working with Pictures of the Year and the Missouri Photojournalism Archive to preserve their photograph collections.

Robert Cohen

For the better part of three decades, Robert Cohen has been chronicling the lives of the people of St. Louis and the surrounding region through his work at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Retiring in 2025, he continues his works as a freelance photojournalist, photographing both the known and bringing to light the unknown.

Cohen picked up his first camera in middle school, selling his snare drum (with his parents’ permission) and replacing it with a Pentax K1000 camera. In high school, he worked for the student newspaper, printing photos in a storage closet and selling prints to the football players.

He majored in photojournalism at the University of Texas at Austin, and his first professional photography job was in 1988 at the former Sun-Tattler in Hollywood, Florida. Before he arrived in St. Louis around 2000, Cohen also spent time at The Commercial Appeal in Memphis and the Times-Union in Jacksonville.

In his career, Cohen gravitated to stories of substance, which often include people living complex lives on the fringes of society. Examples include documenting families living in motels during the recession and the people who, with nowhere else to go, live inside one of St. Louis’ 12,000 abandoned buildings.

High among the awards and recognition are a Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News Photography for the work that Cohen and his fellow Post-Dispatch photographers did in covering the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, following the 2014 killing of Michael Brown. Cohen was also a 2010 Pulitzer finalist for Feature Photography for his coverage of families living in St. Charles County motels during the recession.

Jackie Bell

Jackie Bell has left an indelible mark on the photojournalism industry and higher education through a career that has balanced excellence in both the newsroom and academia. As a professor at the Missouri School of Journalism and overseeing the College Photographer of the Year (CPOY) competition, Bell has helped shape the visual standards, ethical frameworks and business practices of multiples generations of visual storytellers.

Bell joined the University of Missouri’s photojournalism faculty in January 2001 and previously taught for two years at the University of Montana and another four years at other schools. She also has 15 years of combined experience as a staff photographer at The Tennessean, The Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, The Arizona Daily Star and a chain of magazines in Tel Aviv, Israel.

She has worked on national stories and international projects throughout much of Latin America and the Caribbean, including in Haiti and Cuba. Her areas of special interest are environmental photojournalism and underwater photography.

As director of the CPOY for eight years and now as co-director, Bell’s leadership helped grow the program around the world, expanding the competition’s international reach to three times as many countries.

Bell’s legacy persists through the thousands of professionals she trained who now document world events with technical precision, business savvy and commitment to truth. Her hands-on dedication to nurturing talent earned Bell the National Press Photographers Association Mentorship Award in 2025, a validation of a career-long support of diverse, emerging visual journalists.