Kevin P. Coughlin

Who is Kevin P. Coughlin?

Kevin P. Coughlin is a Pulitzer Prize-sharing photojournalist, writer, director of photography, pilot, and aerial photographer. His photographs at Ground Zero following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and while covering funerals and memorial services of fallen fire fighters, police officers, and emergency personnel killed as a result of the attacks are included in the 2002 Pulitzer Prize awarded to The New York Times for Public Service. In addition to The New York Times, his photographs have appeared in the New York Post, New York Daily News, Newsday, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Los Angeles Times, Bloomberg News, Business Week, People, Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone, Time, USA Today and The Wall Street Journal. He has also written magazine articles for GQ and News Photographer.

Coughlin grew up in the Long Island, New York suburb of Farmingdale where he attended and graduated from public schools there. He later attended St. John's University in Jamaica, Queens, NY from 1985 to 1989, where he studied photography and journalism. He also served as a staff photographer and subsequently as Photo Editor of the student newspaper, The Torch and interned as a photographer for Newsday in Melville, New York. After graduation, between 1989 and 1991, he worked as a freelance photographer for Newsday, the Associated Press, United Press International, and for The National Sports Daily under legendary sports photographer and picture editor Neil Leifer. On August 15, 1991, Coughlin persuaded an HBO camera crew to allow him in a cherry picker for an aerial shot of an estimated crowd of 750,000 people attending a free concert by Paul Simon in New York's Central Park. Simon saw the photograph a week later in Newsweek and contacted Coughlin to use the image for his album and video release: Paul Simon's Concert in the Park, August 15, 1991.