Robert Gauthier / Contributed

As a child, Fresno State alumnus Robert Gauthier was fascinated with the photos in newspapers his mother had lying around the house. As a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer with the Los Angeles Times, Gauthier’s photos are the ones fascinating people today.

Starting tomorrow, Gauthier’s photos will be on display at the President’s Gallery in the Thomas Administration Building on campus. Gauthier will also be on campus tomorrow to attend a reception for the opening of the exhibit, and speak to photojournalism students as a part of the College of Arts & Humanities’ Distinguished Alumni lecture series.

Gauthier graduated from Fresno State in 1983 with a degree in journalism. While he was a student, he worked as a photographer, reporter and editor for The Daily Collegian. Gautier said that his experienced professors taught him a lot in his early years.

“They set that foundation for me that it was really up to me to do something with, but they kind of pushed me in the right direction,” he said.

Greg Lewis, who teaches photojournalism at Fresno State, is credited by Gauthier as a mentor. Lewis knew Gauthier was an excellent photographer early on.

“He was a really enthusiastic and energetic kind of guy,” Lewis said. “There are always students who show potential right away and he was one of them.”

Reporter Chris Reynolds was at Fresno State with Gauthier for three years, and the two have since worked together at the L.A. Times for more than a decade. Reynolds thinks one of the traits that makes Gauthier a good photographer is his ability to combine both story and image.

“Rob was the only photojournalism student I can remember who frequently wrote stories in addition to shooting them,” Reynolds said.

Gauthier also shows a sense of compassion for his subjects, as seen in some of his work. He has shot several stories over his career where he simply documented the story of a person with cancer or mental illness over an extended period of time.

“He thinks hard about the circumstances of the people in his pictures, and takes their stories to heart,” Reynolds said of Gauthier.

These qualities were exhibited in Gauthier’s work on an L.A. Times series about corruption at the Martin Luther King, Jr./Drew Medical Center, which led to the death of many patients. The series won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2005.

Gauthier said that his photographs added the last dimension that the series needed.

“It was one of those kind of inside stories. It was very difficult for me to illustrate as things were happening,” he said. “But because of our persistence and just the time I spent hanging around there … I was able to make photos that contributed to the piece.”

Some of Gautier’s photographs from the medical center series will be on display in the President’s Gallery exhibit. Other photographs on display include those shot in Gautier’s travels to war zones and the Middle East.

Gautier hopes the exhibit, which runs through Feb. 7, will inspire students, and show them that graduating from Fresno State can take you to the same career heights as graduating from an Ivy League school.

“I notice that people laugh when I say I went to Fresno State,” said Gautier, who works with people who went to universities like Stanford and Harvard. “There’s that perception that if you go to a state school you’re not really going to succeed. I’m living proof that [success is] possible.”