I shoot because I see. I shoot because if I don’t, I don’t know who will. Activism is seen as a dirty word. I shoot because I find peace in being especially active, and being a vigorous advocate for a cause. How does one define what a “cause†is? According to Webster, it is “a person or thing that acts, happens, or exists in such a way that some specific thing happens as a result; the producer of an effect.â€
I wish that every image I photograph reexamines and redefines the image of the black man, the black woman, and the black child. My photography is first and foremost a catalyst or reason to motive human action. Every picture I take asks the questions, “Who am I and what is my role here on this earth?†It is my way of seeing. It is my way of saying this is another way of seeing me.
Photographs are the universal language of our era. Everyone has hundreds, maybe thousands in their pocket. Weightless, they turn the scale when the argument is: What happened here? Images don’t age or warp. A great photographer’s strings never go out of tune.
It is for this reason that we need photographers. They are the ones who sort all the chaos of the world into images that bring clarity to the free-for-all of life. They are the witnesses and artists who can distill the mayhem and beauty that surrounds us. They call our attention to the things we miss in our everyday lives and they call our attention to events and people at a great distance from our own patch of the universe. When they direct our eyes and hearts with precision and honesty, we know what we know differently and better. Photographers teach us to look again, look harder. Look through their eyes.
I have spent my entire professional life creating, editing, critiquing or teaching photography and working with photographers. It has been the way that I have experienced much of the world. In a deeply personal way I feel an image is a poem about time, about “staying the moment.†Photography can defeat time. Images can keep the memory of a loved one alive, hold a moment in history for future generations, be a witness to tragedy or joy. They can also change behavior, stimulate understanding and create a sense of urgency that will move people to action. Photography is the universal language that speaks to the heart.
Photographers are the dedicated, passionate and sometimes half-crazy individuals who are willing to give their lives, too often quite literally, to show us what needs to be seen, what needs to be known. I can think of no greater honor nor privilege than to have lived a life surrounded by images and the amazing individuals who create them and share them with us.
For me it began with this fear of myself as a hermit and a search for a tool that would put me in a position to have to be out engaging with the world everyday.
Then it became this portal to and catalyst for reckoning with the other and how the camera can be used to breaking down barriers between the photographer, subject and viewer.
Now that the image has become devalued as a truth-revealing mechanism, it is free to own its subjectivity and becomes an ideal medium to navigate ideas around humanity, connection, identity, memory, presence, experience and intimacy. Why is photography important? Photography speaks. When I discovered and later understood photographic visual language, I saw that this language could inform, educate and move audiences worldwide without the need for a shared spoken language. A successful photo story, when well-authored and edited, is universally understood. I once presented a photo story in China in silence to a professional photography group where the audience smiled, laughed, and fell quiet in all the right places — without a word in Mandarin or English. After the last frame, we all just beamed at each other. It was so thrilling.
I believe in light. Photography is light. That light is often shined into the darkest of places by the world’s bravest and most talented photojournalists. I have been most honored to support and publish work by many of them. I intend to continue nurturing, encouraging, supporting, cajoling, helping, counseling, appreciating, celebrating, and paying for professional photojournalism for as long as I am able. I believe in its power. I have been there, as a young photographer, and I understand that passion and drive — and now, as my career has taken me through so many levels and roles in our industry, I feel compelled to support and nurture those storytellers, to help them continue to produce important work and tell those stories, often uncomfortable ones, so that we can, sitting in the comfort of our homes, be made aware of the darker side of our world.
This art, this madness, this compulsion to convey a story we know as photojournalism will not die, storytelling will not die, it will change and evolve but it is human nature to want to learn, to be educated and to understand our world through narratives.
I think photojournalism and the skills required to become a photojournalist are an inherent trait, genetic, it’s built into the DNA, it’s a need to be first to tell a story or pass on knowledge visually, like storytellers through the ages, when storytelling was deemed to be a gift and an important way to educate, when memory was a key requirement for learning.
I first became interested in photojournalism primarily out of an interest in history. One day, while studying the Industrial Revolution, I found myself very saddened by a photograph of a child in a factory. I remember realizing in that moment that both the child and photographer were likely no longer alive and I became fascinated by how the photograph could make me so upset for the hard life of someone who lived so many decades before me. In a way both get more info of them became almost immortal through the photograph and there was something very compelling about that.
I believe it’s incredibly important for photographers to document everyday life and even sometimes the seemingly mundane, not just for a better understanding of our times, but for individuals in the future to be able to reflect on who they are and how they got there. A photograph is particularly powerful because it is accessible to most of humanity. There is no language barrier in photography. I pick stories and pursue the projects I do with the goal of documenting not only important issues of our time, but ones that will also be relevant or perhaps even more vital for our understanding of humanity in the future.