Stacy L. Pearsall is an American photographer. Pearsall served as a military photographer in the United States Air Force until her wounds lead to her medical discharge. Since her retirement from the Air Force Pearsall has worked as a professional photographer.
Biography
Pearsall enlisted in the U.S. Air Force at age 17. She traveled to more than 41 countries and joined the Military Photojournalism program at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University but never earned a degree there while still in the U.S. Air Force. Pearsall first entered combat as a photographer in Iraq in 2003. She spent 280 days covering humanitarian relief missions and covering Special Forces operations. Her images were used by the President, Secretary of Defense, and Joint Chiefs of Staff to make informed decisions in the battle space. She went on to earn the Bronze Star Medal and Air Force Commendation with Valor for her actions in Iraq during three combat tours. While Pearseall was under rehabilitation for the combat injuries that she sustained in Iraq, she spent a long time in waiting rooms surrounded by veterans whom she wished to honor and thank through photography. She has photographed and documented about 6,000 veterans in over 27 states and held many exhibitions showing the work of veterans in their hometowns. Pearsall earned a National Press Photographers Association at Military Photographer of the Year competition; becoming one of only two women to do so. She has also served as a nomination juror for the Pulitzer Prize and held a position in the advisory board of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at The Citadel. Pearsall has also been awarded the Carolinas Freedom Foundation Freedom Award, lauded by the White House as a Champion Change, given the Daughters of the American Revolution Mergaret Cochran Corbin Award, and holds an honorary doctoral degree from the Citadel. Pearsall has completed two books of photography Shooter: Combat from Behind the Camera and A Photojournalist's Field Guide She is the founder or the Veterans Portrait Project. Pearsall, and her husband Andy Dunaway, also a retired combat photographer, live in Charleston, South Carolina. In 2009, Pearsall assumed the ownership and direction of the Charleston Center for Photography.
