Collective Lens: Photography for Social Change

Mark Klett always manages to be dressed for the desert and for the classroom at the same time. He wears earthy Keens, long shorts, and loose fitting, quick-dry, button-downs. Any time you see him he could be stepping out of an REI-dressing room, a faculty meeting, or a wilderness adventure special. Then again, for Klett, the desert is the classroom. And never more so than since 2007, when he first began teaching a course he calls the Phoenix Transect Project.

“A community becomes confident when it is recognized by other communities.” –Nubian Elder

And how, as a photographer, can you help a nonprofit use your images? Is it enough just to donate photographs, or do you have a responsibility to help an organization actually communicate?

Does learning about photography make your life better? If you’re 18, and have already been homeless, and in foster care, and been through major family disintegration—does using a camera or participating in a photography program make some kind of tangible difference for you?

How much impact can a single image really have? Can it, for example, save an entire landscape?

Last weekend, I went to Tasmania! Oh man, that place is so cool. Talk about beautiful—whew! Ryan and I stayed in the guest-hut of a family that lives in a valley near Cygnet, south of Hobart. It was very tiny, made of sticks and stones, and surrounded by thumping wallabies at night. The milky way was so bright we barely recognized the sky at all.

A little background

Last week, I wrote about NGO’s and photographers, and cited a paper by Kimberly Abbott (on the Nieman Journalism Lab website) specifically about the new trend in partnerships between NGO’s and journalists in general. In that paper, she makes a lot of references to the complex ethics of such partnerships.

Should photographers be paid to work for NGO’s?

Well, YES! And no. I mean, of course! Except…sometimes not.

This is a complicated question.

From an organizational perspective, on the one hand you have a scenario like this: a large, international NGO with a significant marketing budget needs to make pictures to chronicle and advertise its work. It has a few different options.

1. It can hire a photographer.
2. It can work with volunteer photographers.
3. It can encourage its employees to also take photographs as a part of their work.

This morning, I caught up with James Chance, who has just won the Emerging Vision prize sponsored by Pictures of the Year International.

Interacting with photographers and photography forums, I see a lot of passionate discussion about how images should be used and shared on the internet. Photographers are, understandably, concerned about intellectual property rights, copyrights, and their ability to continue to make a living from making images.

by Nancy Farese

You can lie to the sun, but you cannot lie to the rain.

-Haitian saying