C. Thomas Hardin and his wife Mary C. Hardin funded a $2,000 scholarship for students working in documentary photojournalism. It was established in 2018.

Administrated through the National Press Photographers Foundation, the C. Thomas Hardin and Mary C. Hardin Documentary Photojournalism Scholarship will recognize either an undergraduate or graduate student who, using documentary photojournalism, demonstrates an ability and interest to explain the human condition or current cultural developments with an emphasis on content, interpretation, and personal enterprise.  The scholarship may be awarded to either a still or a video photographer.

“It is our firm belief that documentary photojournalism captures today’s human conditions and records our history as nothing else does,” said the Hardins. “We have established a National Press Photographers Foundation scholarship that will help encourage and hone the skills of the next generation of still or video documentary photojournalists for decades to come.”

Like the other 12 NPPF scholarships, the scholarship is available to students attending four-year colleges and universities in the U.S. Details of the application process for the Hardin Documentary Photojournalism Scholarship will be posted at nppf.org later in the year.

Hardin is a past president of NPPF and a past president of the National Press Photographers Association. As NPPA president in the 1980s, he fostered the annual NPPA-Nikon Documentary Sabbatical Grant.  For almost 15 years, that grant focused on the Changing Face of America, documenting serious issues of the day. One of the earlier projects earned a Pulitzer Prize.

He is the former director of photography at The Courier-Journal in Kentucky, where he worked for 28 years. He and the photo staff won a Pulitzer Prize and numerous other NPPA annual awards. He was also director of photography at The Detroit News before he retired in 1996. As NPPA president, he generated “A Voice is Born,” a book documenting the founding and first 40 years of the NPPA. He has been elected to the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame and has won the NPPA’s Joseph Costa Award and NPPA’s most prestigious honor, the Joseph A. Sprague Award.