Photojournalist Peter Southwick Dies
Peter Southwick retired from BU in 2017. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky
Photojournalist Peter Southwick Dies
Retired faculty member worked at Associated Press, Boston Globe before joining COM
Peter Southwick, a retired College of Communication associate professor of journalism, was an award-winning photographer who was nominated twice for a Pulitzer Prize.
Southwick died on September 15, 2025. He was 74.
As a staff photographer with the Boston bureau of the Associated Press (AP) from 1981 to 1990, he published photos in every AP member newspaper, magazine, and periodical in the United States and in many international newspapers and periodicals, according to his CV. He covered US presidential campaigns, conventions, and inaugurations; sports championships like the Super Bowl and NBA finals; and major news, such as Pope John Paul II’s visit to Boston in 1979 and Nelson Mandela’s tour of the US in 1990.
Before the AP, he worked at the Cambridge-based alternative weekly The Real Paper and the Boston Herald American, both now defunct. He joined the Boston Globe in 1990 as picture editor and later became director of photography. Over the years, he won National Press Photographers Association, National Headliner, and Boston Press Photographers Association awards, among others. He was nominated for a Pulitzer by the Boston Herald American for coverage of racial unrest at a high school in 1980, and by the AP as part of a team covering the quest by baseball player Pete Rose to break the all-time major league hit record in 1985, according to his CV.
He arrived at BU in 2002 as a COM visiting associate professor of journalism and a year later became an associate professor and director of the photojournalism program. He retired in 2017.
In a BU-produced video faculty profile, Southwick spoke about his perspective on success in the field. “The primary requisite for being a good photojournalist is passion,” he said. “You have to want to be there. You want to be in the middle of the best story—every single day.”