Mark Edelson Has Passed

Sad news this morning – we’ve lost Mark Edelson, a legendary picture editor, to cancer.

I never worked for Mr. Edelson, but I did have a handful of opportunities to talk with him over the years. Always short conversations, but powerful. He was the first person I ever talked to about what it means to be a Picture Editor – what it means to lead, coach, guide and manage photojournalists. We talked about how little training there was to be a picture editor in this world, how so many of us were promoted into management without much of an idea on what it means to manage. We could select photos all day long, but the backside of being an editor was something we all floundered with.

My hope is, later this year, we will make some inroads into solving that problem with a new event here in Athens. Stay tuned, we need to build us some more Mark Edelsons.