Since the 1970s, Don Bartletti has been with several newspapers, including The Times. He’s lugged a camera to five continents on scavenger hunts for news, feature and social documentary projects.

Bartletti picked up Photo 101 as an art major at a San Diego community college in 1968, but he found his “eyes” in 1971 as a 24-year-old Army infantry officer in Vietnam. Youth and fear enabled Bartletti to recognize a target a fraction of a second – and he realized he was organizing confusion.  He relied on a gun when he was scared, but when Bartletti ached for the familiar, he aimed a Nikon F camera at the people and landscape of Vietnam.  The processed Kodachrome 25 slides became a confirmation of life.

For Bartletti, the issue of international migration for survival is a never-ending-story that shapes the cultural fabric of a nation.  In 2003, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in feature photography, the Robert F. Kennedy prize for photojournalism and the George Polk Award for a six-part photo essay about Honduran minors, some as young as 12, clinging to freight trains bounding north through Mexico toward the U.S. border.

don.bartletti@latimes.com