Robert Cohen is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist based in the Midwest.  
 
He picked up his first camera in middle school, convincing his parents that he had no musical talent. They allowed him to sell his snare drum, replacing it with a Pentax K1000 camera.  
 
In high school Cohen worked for the student newspaper, printing photographs in a storage closet behind the chemistry lab and selling prints to the football players. In college he majored in photojournalism at the University of Texas at Austin, working for the daily newspaper and the yearbook. 
 
Following almost four decades of work for newspapers, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville and The Sun-Tattler in Hollywood, Florida, Cohen semi-retired in St. Louis where he became a freelance photographer.  
 
His photographs following unrest in Ferguson, Missouri following the police shooting of Michael Brown were part of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News Photography awarded to the photo staff. He was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize twice - in Feature Photography in 2010 for his work documenting the plight of homeless families living in suburban motels during the recession, and as a member of a Breaking News Reporting team in 2009 for coverage of a city hall shooting in suburban St. Louis.