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Celebrity Photographer Uses Gift To Give Back After Irma

Photo: User "slon_dot_pics" via Pexels.com

The name Jeremy Cowart stands out in the professional photography world. He photographs celebrities, teaches, lectures and devotes himself to humanitarian efforts.

After the 7.0-magnitude earthquake devastated the Haitian half of Hispaniola in 2010, Cowart composed the Voices of Haiti photo essay. The project prompted an audience at the United Nations to send more money to Haiti's earthquake recovery. Cowart also documented the genocide in Rwanda and the aftermath of the Gatlinburg Fires.

Cowart joins Gulf Coast Live to talk about his plans to now come to document the people whose lives and belongings were strewn along Florida’s west coast by Hurricane Irma. He discusses his upcoming project from his home in Nashville, Tennessee.

Rachel Iacovone is a reporter and associate producer of Gulf Coast Live for WGCU News. Rachel came to WGCU as an intern in 2016, during the presidential race. She went on to cover Florida Gulf Coast University students at President Donald Trump's inauguration on Capitol Hill and Southwest Floridians in attendance at the following day's Women's March on Washington.Rachel was first contacted by WGCU when she was managing editor of FGCU's student-run media group, Eagle News. She helped take Eagle News from a weekly newspaper to a daily online publication with TV and radio branches within two years, winning the 2016 Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Award for Best Use of Multimedia in a cross-platform series she led for National Coming Out Day. She also won the Mark of Excellence Award for Feature Writing for her five-month coverage of an FGCU student's transition from male to female.As a WGCU reporter, she produced the first radio story in WGCU's Curious Gulf Coast project, which answered the question: Does SWFL Have More Cases of Pediatric Cancer?Rachel graduated from Florida Gulf Coast University with a bachelor's degree in journalism.
Matthew Smith is a reporter and producer of WGCU’s Gulf Coast Live.