5/13/99

News editors, directors: To arrange an interview with Amy Toensing, contact Dwight Woodward at (740) 593-1886. Photographs of a Belgrade street and of the three freed U.S. soldiers are available at: http://www.ohio.edu/news/pix/BELGRADESTREET.JPG and http://www.ohio.edu/news/pix/POWS.JPG. The photographs may only be reproduced in connection with a news story on Toensing and may not be reproduced elsewhere without Toensing's written permission.

ATHENS, Ohio -- A graduate student in the Ohio University School of Visual Communication was hired by the Rev. Jesse Jackson to document his recent mission to Yugoslavia where he obtained the release of three American prisoners. Jackson hired photographer Amy Toensing to document his trip which began April 28 when he led an interfaith delegation of American religious leaders to appeal to President Slobodan Milosevic to free the prisoners.

Toensing did double duty on the trip, toting a laptop computer and equipment provided her by the New York Times. Her photograph of citizens cowering on Belgrade streets during a NATO bombing was published in the Times May 1, accompanying a story headlined: "Bombs Pound Heart and Homes of Serbia's Capital."

"It depicts the whole sense of grief and shock the people of Belgrade feel," Toensing said of the photo.

Her photograph of the three smiling U.S. soldiers after their release was published May 3 in the Times.

While Toensing had previously worked in the Times Washington bureau, photographing President Clinton, members of Congress and other events, the trip to Yugoslavia had a dramatic impact on her psyche.

"I had a profound sense of the journalistic responsibility to document something," Toensing said. "I wanted to stay. We left like we were heroes for freeing the POWs, but we were leaving behind people our government was dropping bombs on."

A 1993 graduate of Maine's College of the Atlantic, Toensing became interested in photography her senior year when her photo essay of migrant broccoli farmers in rural Maine won first place in the documentary category of a nationwide college photography contest. After a short stint as a photographer at the Valley News, Hanover, N.H., Toensing met a Times photo editor at a photography workshop and in 1995 was hired in a temporary position in the Times Washington bureau. Toensing filled in for full-time Times photographers, but decided to leave the orchestrated world of Washington journalism. She began graduate school at Ohio last fall when she met Jackson who was on a tour of Appalachia.

"All the other schools I looked at everyone just sits around and talks about photography," Toensing said. "At OU, you shoot a lot."