“A Visual Journey,” a new photo exhibit on the career of Professor Bill Gentile, is now on display at Bender Library. The University Archives acquired over 30,000 images, as well as field notebooks and other facsimiles documenting his decades of outstanding and courageous photojournalism, from coverage of wars and conflicts in Nicaragua, Panama, Cuba, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ivory Coast, and beyond. The exhibit also features artifacts from Gentile’s career, including journals, press passes, cameras, and articles of clothing.

Bill Gentile began his career as a journalist in 1977, first as a reporter for the Mexico City News and later as a correspondent for United Press International (UPI). In 1985, he became Newsweek Magazine’s Contract Photographer for Latin America and the Caribbean, based in Managua, Nicaragua. During his career, Gentile covered the U.S.-backed Contra War in Nicaragua and the Salvadoran Civil War of the 1980s, the U.S. invasion of Panama, the 1994 invasion of Haiti, the ongoing conflict with Cuba, the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War and the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also worked in Ivory Coast, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Chad, Angola, Rwanda, and Burundi. Currently, Gentile is Senior Professorial Lecturer as Journalist-in-Residence and full-time professor at American University, an independent journalist and documentary filmmaker, and founder of American University’s Backpack Journalism Project.

The exhibit will remain on display until the end of the semester. To see more by Bill Gentile, check out the Bill Gentile Photojournalism Collection digital collection.