Jacek Gancarz
FEATURE PHOTOGRAPHY
Palm Beach Daily News

The subjects of Jacek Gancarz's Cox Award-winning photograph are not typical Palm Beachers.

"We had a lengthy discussion about where we should run that photo," Gancarz said. "Eventually it ran down page. Here in Palm Beach, instead of motorcyclists like that, you're more likely to see hatted ladies pedaling Schwinns."

	view full image

Gancarz's work in the Palm Beach Daily News is bright and vivid, and his cyclists' shot is a good example.

"That was a fortuitous image, spotted on the way to an assignment," he said. "I just quickly pulled over and started shooting."

No one traveled farther than Gancarz to become an employee and be in position to win a Best of Cox award. When he was five-and-a-half years old in 1969, he and his parents fled Poland, then a Communist nation.

Denied a U.S. visa, they applied for and received a visa to go to Bulgaria, purportedly for a summer holiday on the Black Sea. Instead, they left their route of travel in Hungary and made their way to Romania and Yugoslavia.

At a port on the Adriatic, the Gancarz family hid behind crates of orange soda and went aboard a ferry. On their arrival in Venice, they were detained in a refugee camp until granted asylum and cleared to travel to the United States. Here they settled in south Florida.

His father gave Jacek Gancarz a camera when he was a youth, beginning the latter's interest in photography. He graduated from Florida Atlantic University and freelanced before getting a full-time job four years ago at the Daily News. With staff members like him, it is challenging the larger Palm Beach Post for honors.

"When I was growing up, my parents subscribed to the Post," Gancarz recalled. "I always looked at their photography and admired the quality of it. Many of the photographers over there are my friends now."