ZEKE Magazine: Fall 2021

ZEKEFALL 2021 VOL.7/NO.2 $15 US 

THE MAGAZINE OF GLOBAL DOCUMENTARY 

FEATURED ARTICLES 

AWAKE IN THE DESERT LAND 

Photographs by Sofia Aldinio 

PATH AWAY 

Photographs by Nicolò Filippo Rosso 

FROM TULSA TO MINNEAPOLIS 

Photographs by 27 Black photographers documenting 

this extraordinary time in American history 

THE EMPTYING OF THE ANDES 

Photographs by Emiliano Pinnizzotto 

Published by Social Documentary ZEKE FALL Network 2021/ 1

FALL 2021 VOL.7/NO.2 

$15 US 

2 | AWAKE IN THE DESERT LAND 

Photographs by Sofia Aldinio 

CO-WINNER OF 2021 ZEKE AWARD FOR DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY 

Sofia Aldinio from Awake in the Desert Land 

Nicolò Filippo Rosso from Path Away 

Joshua Rashaad McFadden from From Tulsa to 

Minneapolis: Photographing the Long Road to 

Justice 

Emiliano Pinnizzotto from The Emptying of the 

Andes 

14 | PATH AWAY 

Photographs by Nicolò Filippo Rosso 

CO-WINNER OF 2021 ZEKE AWARD FOR DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY 

40 | FROM TULSA TO MINNEAPOLIS: 

PHOTOGRAPHING THE LONG ROAD TO JUSTICE 

Photographs by 27 Black photographers documenting this 

extraordinary time in American history 

60 | THE EMPTYING OF THE ANDES 

Photographs by Emiliano Pinnizzotto 

26 | 

30 | 

52 | 

54 | 

70 | 

Migration from the Northern Triangle 

The Last Resort to Stay Alive 

by Daniela Cohen 

ZEKE Award Honorable Mention Winners 

Interview with Joseph Rodriguez 

by Caterina Clerici 

Photography & Social Change 

by Emily Schiffer 

Book Reviews 

Edited by Michelle Bogre 

78 | Contributors 

Deborah Espinosa from Photography & Social 

Change 

On the Cover 

Photo by Emiliano Pinnizzotto from The Emptying 

of the Andes. Inside a bus heading in the direction 

of Lima. Many of the people inside the bus are 

leaving their homes forever, looking for a job and 

a better life in the cities. See inside back cover for 

a profile of Emiliano Pinnizzotto.

ZEKE 

THE 

MAGAZINE OF 

GLOBAL DOCUMENTARY 

Published by Social Documentary Network 

Dear ZEKE Readers: 

As I write this letter, Hurricane Ida has just completed its deadly flooding and destruction in Louisiana and the 

Northeast exactly 16 years after Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. Floods have killed 20 people in Tennessee. 

Wildfires rage in the West and in Europe. And the Delta variant of COVID-19 extends its grip. 

It has also been just a few weeks since the fall of Kabul as the Taliban swept into victory following the 

American pullout after our 20-year failed effort at nation building. Now a chaotic and deadly evacuation 

has ended for U.S. troops, American citizens, our Afghan allies, and nationals of other countries struggling 

to flee the imposition of a harsh and despotic rule that we all know too well from the years prior to 9/11 

when the Taliban last controlled Afghanistan. 

While none of these events are presented in this issue of ZEKE, prior issues have featured numerous 

articles on climate change and the U.S. "War on Terror." We continue to publish ZEKE because we stand 

resolutely behind the importance of the documentary image, and the photographers who make them, in 

bringing awareness, nuance, and humanity to global issues. 

In this issue of ZEKE, we are thrilled to present the winners of the 2021 ZEKE Award for Documentary 

Photography. Sofia Aldinio’s award-winning project, Awake in the Desert Land, explores migration and historical 

memory as residents from Baja California, Mexico are uprooted from their land as a result of climate 

change. Nicolò Filippo Rosso’s project, Path Away, follows migrants from the Northern Triangle countries 

(Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador), as they flee violence and climate change to seek better opportunities 

in the U.S. only to find the border sealed as they approach their destination. 

We also present the extraordinary images by Italian photographer Emiliano Pinnozzotto and his project, 

The Emptying of the Andes, documenting an important, under-reported, and all too common story, where 

young people are fleeing their ancestral mountainous homes only to find a new form of poverty and alienation 

in urban centers—in this case in Peru—as climate change makes it increasingly difficult to sustain life 

at 13,000 feet. 

It is no coincidence that migration is a central theme in these three exhibits as the existential threat of 

climate change forces millions of people each year to seek less vulnerable environments. 

We are also thrilled to present 27 submissions from a call for entries from Black photographers on the 

theme “From Tulsa to Minneapolis: Photographing the Long Road to Justice” including first-place winner 

Donald Black Jr. for his story A Day No One Will Remember. 

In addition to these portfolios, Emily Schiffer has written a very provocative and inspiring feature article 

on Photography and Social Change exploring photographic artists who are making a difference by challenging 

the norms of both imagemaking and traditional structures of power. 

Lastly, on a personal note, I am very saddened to report that the namesake 

for ZEKE magazine, our thirteen-year-old beloved feline companion Ezekiel 

(aka Zeke), passed away in July following injuries suffered from a valiant fight 

with a wild animal. Barbara and I take solace that his exuberance for life, his 

unbounding energy, and his persistent demand for dignity often denied our 

non-human friends, live on in this magazine. 

Matthew Lomanno 

Glenn Ruga 

Executive Editor 

ZEKE FALL 2021/ 1

This ongoing photography project 

by Sofia Aldinio documents 

how climate change is uprooting 

small, inland and coastal 

communities in Baja California, 

Mexico, that depend directly on 

natural resources to survive and thereby 

threatening cultural heritage. 

The peninsula is facing stronger hurricanes, 

changes in precipitation patterns 

and streamflow, loss of vegetation 

and soils and negative impact on fisheries 

and biodiversity. It is estimated that 

in Mexico and Central America, 3.9 

million people will be forced to leave 

their homes due to climate change. 

Photographed in four different communities 

across the peninsula, the work 

presented here documents the tension of 

the communities whose cultural heritage 

is at risk, adds a new perspective on 

the existing reports on climate change 

and migration and starts a conversation 

about how the loss of collective memory 

has a direct impact on the mental health 

of the next generation. 

The newest cemetery in San Jose de 

Gracia, Baja California, Mexico, 

January 17, 2021. The small community 

has at least four different cemeteries 

generationally identified. The town lost 

most of its population after Hurricane 

Lester in 1992, the biggest storm the 

community has faced in its history. 

Since 2006, the community has lost 60 

members and has a population of 12 

today. 

2 / ZEKE FALL 2021

Awake in the Desert Land 

MIGRATION, CLIMATE CHANGE, AND HISTORICAL MEMORY 

ZEKE AWARD FIRST-PLACE WINNER 

By Sofia Aldinio 



Photo by Sofia Aldinio 

Felipe and Olga drive to buy food 

for their goats in San Juanico, Baja 

California, Mexico, January, 23, 2021. 

The land is parched after no rain for 

three years, and the goats have been 

having a hard time finding the wild 

food that grows in the desert. 



Felipe cooks octopus in Scorpion Bay, 

Baja California, January 12, 2021. The 

weather is changing and we don’t get the 

same amount of fish anymore. “The lobster 

and octopus season used to last for two 

or three months, but it only lasted for a 

week this year,” he says. This particular 

day they pulled only one octopus that 

weighed 500gr, worth $2 USD. The local 

fishing community is stressing about what 

the future will bring them — to put enough 

food on their table and money to keep 

going. The elders are pushing the younger 

generation to stay clear of the industry, urging 

them to move to the cities for greater 

opportunities. 




Olga and Felipe in their house in San 

Juanico, Baja California, Mexico, 

January 25, 2021. Felipe has been 

struggling because the lobster season 

is dry. Olga, his wife, cooks tamales to 

sell on the weekends for extra money. 




Chuy Rojas holds a piece of guaco on 

a ranch in San Ignacio, Baja California, 

Mexico, December 31, 2021. The 

native plant grows in the hills of the 

desert. They have been relying on this 

herb to protect themselves from the virus 

during COVID-19 times. 




Erick Rojas walks a cow that is about 

to get milked in San Ignacio, Baja 

California, Mexico, January 1, 2021. 

Erick just returned to the farm after 

working in a mine on the east coast of 

the peninsula. “The pay was terrible and I 

couldn’t afford the living,” he says. He is 

currently harvesting local trees, extracting 

properties on behalf of an American 

pharmaceutical company. 



PATH 

AWAY 

TENS OF THOUSANDS FLEE VIOLENCE, 

CLIMATE CHANGE, AND ECONOMIC 

COLLAPSE FOR NORTH AMERICA 

ZEKE AWARD FIRST-PLACE WINNER 

By Nicolò Filippo Rosso 

Two months after Hurricanes Eta and 

Iota hit Central America in November 

2020, leaving 4.5 million victims of 

flooding and mudslides in their wake, 

11 thousand people gathered in San 

Pedro Sula, Honduras starting the 

first migrants’ caravan of the year heading 

towards the United States. 2021 began 

with one of the most significant migration 

waves of the last decade posing a difficult 

challenge for the new administration of 

President Joe Biden. 

The migrants’ crossing through gangcontrolled 

areas, deserts, and jungles 

is made even harder by the pandemic. 

International aid is scant, and many 

migrants’ shelters and charity kitchens 

closed their doors to avoid contagion. 

Thousands of migrants have reached 

Mexico while walking along its southern 

border with Guatemala, continuing the 

migration routes of the Gulf of Mexico, and 

the northern border with the United States to 

seek asylum. However, hundreds of families 

are expelled and returned to Mexico. Their 

asylum claims are denied with arguments 

based on Title 42, a U.S. statute that allows 

the expulsion of migrants from a country 

where a virus such as COVID-19 is present. 

This is their story. 


Left: Lesbia Vanessa Bovadia, 35 years old, 

from Honduras, cries as she talks to a psychologist 

in a charity shelter in Tijuana, Mexico. 

After being separated from her children in the 

United States, she was deported to Mexico in 

2019. She doesn’t know where her children 

are, and she’s desperate to find them. The 

last time she saw them was in Chattanooga, 

Tennessee in 2018 before being arrested by 

the U.S. police. 



Photo by Nicolò Filippo 

Rosso 

Guatemalan police officers take 

custody of a Honduran migrant 

who attempted to break the police 

barricade while driving a truck in 

Vado Hondo, Guatemala. 

January 18, 2021. 




Rosso 

Migrants rest on a bridge 

in San Manuel, Tabasco, 

Mexico. March 6, 2021. 



Rosso 

Family members stand on 

a riverside in Tapachula, 

Mexico. They are looking for 

an entrance to the river to 

bathe and wash their clothes. 





Rosso 

A boy sits on the ground 

as the migrant caravan is 

stopped by a barricade of 

the Guatemalan police. Vado 

Hondo, Guatemala. 






Rosso 

More than a thousand 

migrants from Mexico, Central 

America, and South America 

live in the Jesus’ Ambassador 

church in Tijuana, Mexico. 

A Honduran man works as a 

barber for the community. 

April 24, 2021. 


Migration from the 

Phoenix 

Channel 

Islands 

Mexicali 

Guadalupe 

Hermosillo 

A 

Chihuahua 

G o l f o d e C a l i f o r n i a 

La Paz 

Culiacan 

Durango 

MEXICO 

Saltillo 

Ciudad Victoria 

Monterrey 

Zacatecas 

Aguascalientes San Luis Potos 

Tepic 

Leon 

Queretaro 

Guadalajara 

Morelia Pachu 

Colima 

Toluca 

Mexico 

Chilpancingo 

P a c i f i c 

Olga Marina Rodriguez 

Gonzalez holds her two 

babies while waiting for 

the cargo train known as La 

Bestia “The Beast.” People 

jump on the moving train to 

reach Northern Mexico, on 

their way to the United States. 

Coatzacoalcos, in Veracruz, 

Mexico. February 16, 2021. 

Photo by Nicolò Filippo Rosso. 

O c e a n 


Northern Triangle 

A last resort to stay alive 

by Daniela Cohen 

Little Rock 

ustin 

i 

ca 

City 

MEXICO 

Guatemala 

The significant increase 

in migration from 

Central America to the 

U.S. in recent years 

indicates rapidly deteriorating 

conditions 

in the region that have left people 

no choice but to flee in order to 

survive. The majority of migrants 

come from Honduras, Guatemala 

and El Salvador, together referred 

to as the Northern Triangle. 

Around 311,000 migrants 

from this region arrived in the 

U.S. between 2014 and 2020 

according to the Congressional 

Research Service. In June 2021, 

US Customs and Border Protection 

(CBP) recorded almost 180,000 

Baton Rouge 

GUATEMALA 

San Salvador 

Jackson 

EL SALVADOR 

BELIZE 

HONDURAS 

Tegucigalpa 

Managua 

Havana 

San Jose 

Atlanta 

Montgomery 

NICARAGUA 

COSTA RICA 

Tallahassee 

Columbia 

migrants – including 15,000 unaccompanied 

minors and 50,000 

families – the highest monthly total 

in over 20 years. But given that 

one third of these migrants have 

crossed the border previously, the 

actual increase in migration may 

not be as high. 

“It’s one of the hardest decisions 

people are often making,” says 

Andani Alcantara Diaz, supervising 

attorney of removal defense for 

the Refugee and Immigrant Center 

for Education and Legal Services 

(RAICES) in Austin, Texas. “That’s 

why you see people go through 

really horrible things and still not 

leave for a while because they 

don’t want to leave their homes, 

their families, everything they 

know, behind. But at a certain 

point, it’s the only thing they can 

do to stay alive.” 

The main drivers of migration 

from the Northern Triangle are violence 

and socioeconomic insecurity, 

which frequently overlap, and are 

exacerbated by climate change. 

“Many migrants are fleeing 

gangs or other sorts of dangerous 

organizations that have harmed 

them and their families,” says 

Alcantara Diaz, “And they know 

they can’t go to the government, 

that the government in their countries 

is not going to protect them.” 

Many of these gangs originated 

in Los Angeles in the 1980s and 

were later deported back to their 

home countries in the region. 

Women and children are 

particularly vulnerable to violence, 

often within the home. Honduras 

and El Salvador have some of the 

highest rates of femicide worldwide. 

Endemic corruption means 

that the police are often involved 

and those responsible are not held 

to account. The threat of violence 

by both gangs and family members 

has led to a surge in unaccompanied 

minors arriving at the U.S. 

border since 2014. 

Socioeconomic drivers of migration 

include widespread inequality 

and poverty and pervasive lack 

CUBA 

JAMAICA 

Panama 

Bahama 

Islands 

Nassau 

Long Island 

G r e a t e r A n t i l l e s 

Caribbean Sea 

of work opportunities. With 40 

percent of the population under the 

age of 20, youth can either stay in 

precarious working conditions or 

try to seek opportunities elsewhere. 

Climate change has led to prolonged 

droughts and crop losses. 

The coffee industry has been hit 

hard by both an increase in the 

coffee leaf rust fungus and low 

international coffee prices, jeopardizing 

a critical source of seasonal 

income for over a million families. 

In addition, in 2020, the region 

was devastated by the COVID 

pandemic and back-to-back category 

4 Hurricanes Eta and Iota, 

which displaced over 500,000 

people, leaving many homeless 

and without access to clean 

drinking water. According to the 

World Food Programme, approximately 

eight million people are 

facing hunger, including a quarter 

with emergency levels of food 

insecurity. Almost 15 percent of 

people surveyed in January 2021 

reported plans to migrate, up eight 

percent from 2018. 

A Migrant Family’s 

Journey 

Angel Antonio Mejia Gonzales, 

from Danli, Honduras, felt he 

had no choice but to leave. The 

33-year-old and his wife, Olga 

Marina Rodriguez Montoya, 27, 

had both been affected by violence 

and wanted to protect their 

children. Mejia Gonzales is eager 

to work but says there were no 

prospects for work in Honduras. 

And Hurricanes Eta and Iota took 

what little they had. 


Migrants from the Northern Triangle (mostly from Honduras) sit on a cargo train in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz 

(Mexico) on the way to Mexico City where they will find another train heading north toward the U.S. border. 

February 16, 2021. Photo by Nicolò Filippo Rosso. 

“I don’t want my children to be in 

the street all their life,” says Rodriguez 

Montoya. 

In January 2021, the couple joined 

the migrant caravan leaving Honduras 

with their four children: eight-yearold 

Angel Isai, seven-year-old Yosari 

Yolanda, five-year-old Heili Maite, and 

three-year-old Jeremy Santiago. The 

8,000-person caravan would offer 

more protection from violence than 

going alone. 

With only 2,000 lempira ($84 US) 

in hand, they started the long journey, 

travelling by bus, train, car and on foot 

to reach neighboring Guatemala. But 

a coordinated military operation by 

Guatemalan law enforcement, upholding 

an agreement to prevent migrant flows 

north, blocked the caravan. Half of the 

migrants were sent back to Honduras, 

but the Mejia Gonzales family managed 

to continue on foot. Traversing the Rio 

Montagua day after day, they lost their 

shoes in the mud. Hungry, thirsty, and 

exhausted, they walked on. 

“It was hard to see the kids sleeping 

on the ground,” says Mejia Gonzales. 

“Nobody wants to see their kids in that 

situation.” 

Money quickly ran out and they 

were forced to beg for help along 

the way, help they believe was given 

because of their children. 

Alcantara Diaz describes the numerous 

challenges migrants face when fleeing 

– threat of kidnapping by Mexican 

cartels to extort ransom from family 

members in the U.S.; sexual violence 

against women; mistreatment by law 

enforcement in countries en route; lack 

of food and money; threat of being 

captured and trafficked by gangs; and 

risk of death by crossing at dangerous 

points like the desert or a river. 

And even if people make it into the 

U.S., their struggles do not end there. 

Inhumane Treatment 

by Border Control 

The Mejia Gonzales family has tried 

to cross the U.S. border to seek asylum 

three times, all unsuccessful. 

The first was in February 2021, when 

they arrived in Piedras Negras, Mexico, 

to find everything covered in ice. A man 

overseeing the place where migrants 

were crossing the river demanded a lot 

of money. The family paid all they had – 

500 pesos given to them by a Mexican 

girl – to be able to cross. 

Mejia Gonzales set out first to test 

the river’s depth and then returned for 

his wife and children. The cold water 

was moving fast, and one of the children 

– all tied to the parents – almost 

got swept away but was rescued by 

a fellow migrant. Finally, alongside 

many other Honduran, Guatemalan 

and El Salvadoran families, they made 

it across. 

They were soon apprehended by 

border officials, who took them to a 

facility where they did not even provide 

water. Rodriguez Montoya cried, asking 

for asylum, but an officer told her 

they see hundreds of families and every 

situation is the same. 

The family was then put in a CBP car 

vehicle with other migrants and supervised 

to make sure nobody went back. 

Late that night, they were dropped off 

on the Mexican side of the bridge. 

This is Title 42 in action, an order 

passed by the Trump administration 

allowing the expulsion of migrants 

under the auspices of the current public 

health emergency. 

“It is a very concerning tool that [the 

Biden] administration is still using,” 

says Alcantara Diaz. “Their claim is 

that they’re making sure that people 

are not bringing in more virus . . ..” 

Yet they are returning people who are 

not sick, even though Immigration and 

Customs Enforcement has the capacity 

to conduct COVID testing. 

And while the order states that the 

intent is to avoid holding migrants in 

congregate settings, it is being used to 

expel migrants after they have spent 

long periods in these settings. 

Title 42 contravenes international 

law, which requires specific screening 

processes for people seeking asylum so 

that they are not sent back to dangerous 

situations. 

Advocates are also concerned that 

the order may be used disproportionately 

against people from certain 


countries or skin colors, targeting the 

largely Black, Indigenous and Latino 

migrants who are crossing into the U.S. 

at land borders. 

A few days after being expelled, 

the Mejia Gonzales family tried to 

cross again. Border officials yelled at 

them, hit their oldest son, and called 

Rodriguez Montoya a liar. 

“Just because someone is a migrant, 

they treat us however they want,” says 

Mejia Gonzales, “but everyone is 

human in life. We’re all people.” 

Since March 2020, CBP has 

executed over 642,700 expulsions 

under Title 42. 

A Third Attempt 

Increasingly desperate, Rodriguez 

Montoya borrowed money from her 

brother in Waco, Texas to make a 

third crossing at Reynosa in April. This 

time she went alone with the children, 

paying “coyotes” (human smugglers) to 

help her. Mejia Gonzalez remained in 

Mexico, planning to cross afterward so 

they could reunite in the U.S. 

This journey, which Rodriguez 

Montoya calls “a horror movie,” started 

with two weeks in an abandoned 

house where she heard that organ and 

human trafficking had been committed. 

Migrants were told that if the police 

arrived, they would be killed. 

“We already paid them, so our 

lives had no value anymore,” says 

Rodriguez Montoya. 

The crossing involved traversing 

woods inhabited by wild animals 

to reach the river, then hours of fast 

walking. Carrying two of her children 

who could not walk by themselves, she 

prayed for strength. They crossed the 

river on a raft and were picked up by 

border patrol in McAllen, Texas. 

Left waiting wet, hungry, and thirsty 

for hours, they were finally taken to a 

bridge, where officers gave the children 

juice and biscuits. 

“I was happy because I thought I 

would get to rest with my children,” 

says Rodriguez Montoya. 

Instead, they were taken to “la 

hielera” or “refrigerator,” a large 

cement space notorious for its low 

temperatures. They were given some 

food, but after not eating for so long, 

Yosari Yolanda started to vomit. The 

officers paid no attention until her 

mother cried, “My daughter is going to 

die here because you won’t take me to 

the hospital.” 

Finally, Rodriguez Montoya and 

her children were taken to the hospital 

in Laredo, Texas, and Yosari Yolanda 

tested to ensure she didn’t have 

COVID. After giving her medicine, a 

nurse brought milk and cornflakes, and 

she was finally able to eat. 

The next day, the migrants were put 

on a bus and driven back to Mexico. 

Rodriguez Montoya says everyone got 

off the bus crying. “I didn’t want to go 

back after everything that happened to 

me. I told them, ‘It’s better that you kill 

me or that you put me in jail and leave 

my children here because my brother 

lives in the U.S. But do not send me 

back to Mexico, the cartels are going 

to torture me with my children.’” 

A Life in Limbo 

Along with thousands of other migrants, 

the Mejia Gonzales family is now 

stuck in Mexico. They recently applied 

for help online through Al Otro Lado, 

a binational advocacy and legal aid 

organization, but have no idea when 

they will hear back. They sleep on 

carton boxes in a single room in Piedras 

Negras and sell candies to survive. “Los 

gates,” the local military police infamous 

for committing numerous crimes with 

impunity, is a lurking presence. 

Despite the trauma the family has 

been through and continues to endure, 

they cannot consider returning to 

Honduras. 

“I don’t want to give up, I want 

to keep fighting,” says Rodriguez 

Montoya, “but I’m very scared.” 

Vice President Kamala Harris’s recent 

trip to Central America to discourage 

migration to the U.S. disregards the fact 

that people are fleeing for their lives 

says Alcantara Diaz. “These big proclamations 

aren’t going to change the reality 

and the day-to-day for people who 

are trying to make a decision whether to 

leave everything they know behind just 

to try to stay alive.” 

A young girl watches out from a bus window. People use different types of transportation to reach the border 

between Honduras and Guatemala. January 15, 2021. Photo by Nicolò Filippo Rosso. 


ZEKE AWARD HONORABLE MENTION WINNER 

Kirsten Rebekah Bethmann 

Bear and Fanny, United States 


T 

his series explores the 

complexities of marriage 

when a spouse is afflicted 

with dementia and their 

partner is required to take on 

the role of caretaker. Layers of 

emotion surface as the ability to 

remain an equal in the partnership 

dissolves and the roles begin 

to resemble that of a parent and 

child. 

This body of work is the result 

of three months when I moved 

back in with my parents at age 

43 to help my mother care for 

my father who, at 75, was losing 

his battle with severe vascular 

dementia. Instead of watching 

my mother care for my father, I 

chose to bear witness to a wife 

struggling to manage her internal 

conflicts with losing the love of 

her life to a disease that stole 

him from her. I attempted to 

remove myself personally in order 

to tell this story from my mother’s 

point of view. 



Misha Maslennikov 

The Don Steppe, Russian Federation 

Yurka-Shut behind his farm house in the steppe. Senshin 

farm, village of Oblivskaya, Rostov-on-Don region, 

Russia. February 2012. 


Picture yourself in the 

midst of the steppe, 

somewhere out in the 

open, looking at the 

horizon. You find your gaze drawn 

beyond this meeting of earth 

and sky, to the far side of the 

visible, so much that you can see 

nothing other than this inexorable 

boundary. What’s out there? What 

kind of life beyond imagining? 

Perhaps something utterly different, 

utterly unknown: seas and 

mountains, the crystalline glint 

of office windows in concrete 

canyons, elegant shop windows, 

the fireplaces of ski lodges? 

Perhaps climbing the corporate 

ladder with its strict dress code, or 

beach volleyball in stylish bikinis? 

But you stand there for a while in 

silence, just a bit longer, and all 

this falls away. There is only the 

earth under your feet, near and 

far, as far as the eye can see, and 

the sky above your head, around 

you and about you, and it all runs 

together as one, even within you, 

and it’s as if there is no longer an 

observer. 

Top. Repairing the furnace 

in an abandoned house 

near Senshin farm, village of 

Oblivskaya, Rostov-on-Don 

region, Russia. January 2011. 

Bottom. Mother and son in 

the yard of their house. Frolov 

farm, village of Oblivskaya, 

Rostov-on-Don region, Russia. 

July 2010 



Ashkan Shabani 

“Eshgh, Tars, Azadi” (Love, Fear, Freedom) 

Rana rests on Negin’s lap in a quiet place in the middle of the jungle. 


Top: Muhammad and Amir Ali going shopping in a mall in Tehran, one of their 

favorite hobbies. Holding hands in public without fear is a dream for them. 

Bottom: Muhammad and Amir Ali are living in a 60-meter rental house in Tehran. 

They have to hide the true nature of their relationship, and even told the landlord that 

they are cousins in order to rent the house. 

Iranians face many obstacles. 

Some come from the regime 

imposing ideological restrictions 

and political pressure, 

while others result from the strained 

economic situation. Still, more pressure 

comes from the public’s closed, 

traditional way of thinking. 

Homosexuality is a target that 

both society and the regime are 

against. In post-revolutionary 

Iran, any type of sexual activity 

outside a heterosexual marriage 

is forbidden and homosexual sex 

is punishable by death based on 

the laws of Sharia. For over 40 

years, the Islamic Republic of 

Iran has denied that gays exist 

in the country. Iran is among the 

few countries in the world where 

homosexuals still risk execution 

for their sexual orientation. As a 

result, gay men and women live 

with systematic suppression, discrimination, 

family rejection, and 

judicial problems. They live their 

lives in fear every day. Despite 

this, under the skin of Tehran and 

many other cities, homosexuals 

find ways to overcome these 

restrictions so they can pursue 

love, life, and a future that recognizes 

their existence. The idea of 

freedom still seems remote. 



Richard Sharum 

Campesino Cuba 

Two women in the village of Providencia separate the rice from their husks as they 

prepare lunch for the house. Because rice is not grown in the immediate area, 

it has been traded for coffee with a nearby valley known for its rice production. 

Providencia, Cuba. 2019. 


Afour-year documentation 

of the Campesino 

people and culture of 

rural Cuba. Campesino 

means “farmer” or “rural peasant” 

and includes some of the 

most poverty-stricken populations 

on the island. They number close 

to 20 million and occupy close to 

85% of the land in Cuba. Whereas 

most coverage of Cuba consists 

of Havana or other major cities, 

this project aims at spending time 

with those most often unseen or 

unspoken of, those who make up 

the agricultural backbone of the 

nation, and the families intertwined 

within. 

Above: A woman stands in a typical 

guano hut in the small village of 

Peladero, in the Sierra Maestra 

mountain range, in eastern Cuba. A 

home-made broom leans against the 

house, made of palm fronds. Housing 

in rural Cuba usually consists of these 

same materials, with a dirt floor. The 

roofs, also made of palm, are effective 

at keeping out rain and oppressive 

heat. Peladero, Cuba. 2019. 



David Verberckt 

Unending Ethnic Conflict in Burma 

A Kachin girl who has been living since 2011 in a camp for internally displaced 

persons in Kachin State. Over 100,000 Kachin are displaced within their own country 

as a result of a long-lasting armed conflict between the Myanmar Army and the 

Kachin Independence Army (KIA). Ziun IDP camp in government-controlled territory, 

Myanmar, March 2019 


During the past years, I 

have extensively visited 

Myanmar’s borderland 

states of Rakhine, 

Kachin and Karen, in governmentcontrolled 

areas and ethnic armed 

groups-controlled territory, in 

order to try to understand, access 

and visualize the country’s neverending 

ethnic conflicts. 

With 70 years of ethnic 

conflicts, most ethnic groups have 

established strong armed groups, 

parallel administrations, schools 

and health centers in areas that 

are under their full control along 

the Thai border (Karen and Shan) 

and Chinese border (Kachin). 

Top: Democratic Karen Buddhist Army 

parade with wooden guns. Kayin State, 

Myanmar, November 2018 

Bottom: Internally displaced persons that 

fled from Baung Wheit village in April 

2019 after the village was attacked by 

government forces with heavy artillery. 

Villagers sought refuge at a nearby 

temple. Ninety people live now on 

the compound of the temple. Naressa 

Temple, Mrauk-Oo township, Rakhine 

State, Myanmar, October 2019 


FROM TULSA TO MINNEAPOLIS 

Photo by Joshua Rashaad 

McFadden 

After the last speech at the 

Commitment March Rally on 

August 28, 2020, thousands 

of people flooded the streets of 

Washington, D.C., to protest 

police brutality in America. 


PHOTOGRAPHING THE LONG ROAD TO JUSTICE 


FROM TULSA TO MINNEAPOLIS: PHOTOGRAPHING THE LONG ROAD TO JUSTICE 

Several consistent themes arise across 

the thousands of images documenting 

the last year of racial justice 

protests in the United States— the 

raised Black power fist; a surge of 

civilian bodies facing off against 

a line of stony-faced police forces; eyes 

raised to the camera in triumphant challenge 

of the powers that be. Each of these 

poignant moments draw from long histories 

of photography on the American struggle 

for justice within a country whose deeply 

embedded racism spans centuries built of 

settler colonization and the enslavement of 

Black people. 

An especially horrific part of that long 

history of racial terror and subjugation in 

America is the 1921 Tulsa, Oklahoma massacre 

of Black residents by a white mob. 

While many Black Americans have long 

held the memory of that deadly night and 

the several preceding years of white mob 

violence that erupted across the nation, 

few photographs exist to bear ongoing 

witness to the death and destruction. In the 

decades since, however, Black Americans 

have utilized the camera’s evidentiary 

power as a tool in the twin struggles to 

humanize Black lives and depict racial 

injustice. The evisceration of Tulsa’s prosperous 

Black community and the 2020 

racial justice protests that represent the 

largest social justice movement in U.S. 

history are separated by nearly 100 years, 

serving as troubling markers of how little 

progress has been made on this long road 

to justice. Yet, the influx of visual storytelling 

by those whose lives are held in the 

balance and social media’s access to a 

rapt global audience offers new hope that 

justice might yet be realized. 

Since Black Lives Matter’s 2013 beginnings 

as a hashtag following the 2013 

shooting death of Black teenager Trayvon 

Martin, the movement gained steam as 

both a social media campaign and a 

series of national protests in the wake of 

each Black person killed by police brutality. 

It’s vital to understand how much this 

movement (and many other contemporary 

social justice efforts) owes to the wide 

circulation of visual evidence online. While 

such egregious acts of racial violence and 

police brutality have been rampant since 

the advent of American policing, it is the 

increasing presence of digital cameras that 

have ushered in an era where racism can 

be documented and therefore demand further 

reckoning. As BLM builds on the visual 

rhetoric of Civil Rights Movement photography, 

the relationship between street-level 

activism and the power of the camera is 

increasingly revealed. 

The collection of 23 photographs on 

these pages is drawn from over 500 

images submitted by photographers who 

answered the call to share their visual 

interpretations of the Long Road to Justice. 

Importantly, the work is primarily made 

by Black photographers whose lived 

experiences of racial injustice and respect 

for Black lives is tangibly felt across the 

photo essay. From Brian Branch-Prices’s 

intimate look at Black musicians to Kenechi 

Unachukwu’s We Still Here, a picture of 

Black resilience emerges. Donald Black 

Jr.’s loving ode to Black childhood symbolizes 

exactly what we fight for: a future 

where the threat of police brutality against 

our children, our mothers, our fathers and 

brothers is a thing of the past. 

The work to realize that future, however, 

is far from over. Even as these images of 

Black life compel the world to recognize 

the shared humanity of all people, there 

remains a stark disconnect between the 

realities visualized by our photography 

and the widespread realization of social, 

political, and economic reform. The 

struggle for racial justice continues and we 

lift our cameras as we steady our resolve, 

ready to meet the call wielding our choice 

of weapons. 

—Tara Pixley 

Program Credits 

Chair: 

Lisa DuBois 

Jurors: 

Laylah Amatullah Barrayn 

Lisa DuBois 

Anthony Barboza 

Eli Reed 

Jamel Shabazz 


Best-of-Show Award 

Donald Black Jr. 

A Day No One Will Remember 

A collection of images created by Donald 

Black Jr. over the past 10 years. After returning 

home to Cleveland, Ohio, he started creating 

images that only an insider could see 

and began making images that represented 

his perception of his reality. Seeing himself 

and where he came from has influenced 

an obsession to photograph children in his 

community. 



Above 

Photographer: Titus Brooks Heagins 

Exhibit Title: Where the Sidewalk Ends 

This project represents a visual dialog 

that interrogates the lives of those who 

live in the margins of society. 

Caption: Brittany and Brianna 

Right top 

Photographer: Brian Branch-Price 

Exhibit Title: Rhythm and Praise, an 

Epic Journey 

This project reflects the expressions, 

thoughts and actions of a people, of a 

culture and of a folk who love to sing, 

dance, shout, give, teach, preach, cut a 

step all in the name of gospel music. 

Caption: Percy Bady, Newark, New 

Jersey 

Right below 

Photographer: Teanna Woods Okojie 

Exhibit Title: Black Boy Joy 

Black Boy Joy is a series of multiple 

images spanning from 2013 to 2021 

depicting young African youth and 

young men in various environments 

experiencing pure joy. 


Above 

Photographer: Brian Branch-Price 

Exhibit Title: BLM: The Third 

Expressing the frustrations of an oppressed 

community reacting to social injustices, economic 

apartheid, Jim Crow, over-policing, 

lynching, inhumanity, during peaceful and 

confrontational protest in New York, New 

Jersey, Philadelphia, Richmond, and D.C. 

Caption: Livia Rose Johnson, 20, march 

organizer during a Justice for George Floyd 

protest and rally in New York on June 4, 2020 

Left 

Photographer: Raymond W. Holman, Jr. 

Exhibit Title: COVID-19 in Black America 

Environmental portraits of Black and brown 

skin people with first-hand experience of 

COVID-19 – having recovered, lost family 

members, been mentally challenged by 

social isolation, and figuring out how to 

adjust and make a new pathway. 

Caption: A Princeton University student 

experiencing a year of online classes and 

isolation due to COVID-19, but becoming a 

stronger human being through this challenge. 



Above 

Photographer: Lisa DuBois 

Exhibit Title: MAAFA: The Great African 

Tragedy 

A term meaning “Great Disaster” in Swahili, 

MAAFA ceremonies honoring ancestors 

became part of African-American culture 

at the onset of slavery — the African 

Holocaust — and continue today, honoring 

the generations that lived and died as slaves 

and bringing catharsis. 

Caption: A woman prepares for a ritual 

using a bell. It is believed ancestors can hear 

this sound. 

Right 

Photographer: Imari DuSauzay 

Exhibit Title: We the People 

Started by Joe of Saint James Joy, these 

Block Party sessions in the heart of Brooklyn’s 

Clinton Hill celebrated the community 

without separations, embracing all who came 

to share their joy in collective dance free 

from imposed constructs of social stress and 

all “isms,” healing through a collective of We 

The People. 

Caption: FLIGHT 


Left 

Photographer: Cheryle Galloway 

Exhibit Title: Out of Many? 

Photographing as an archaeologist 

discovering things left behind by a lost 

civilization, removing social constructs 

used as tools to divide us in the hope to 

breakdown all walls to mutuality, Out of 

Many? asks, how does America heal to 

become one nation? 

Caption: “How much time do you want 

for your ‘progress’”? James Baldwin. The 

White House, Washington, D.C. 

Lower Left 

Photographer: LeRoy W. Henderson 

Exhibit Title: Expressions Against Racism 

and Oppression in America 

These photographs represent growing 

public expression against racial injustice 

and oppression in America. People of all 

ages are beginning to become more vocal. 

Significantly, young people in growing 

numbers are taking the leadership in this 

movement for change. 

Above 

Photographer: Collette Fournier 

Exhibit Title: Taking the Struggle to the 

Streets—Black Lives Always Mattered 

After learning my people were once slaves 

as a youngster, I have been on a visual 

journey to document my people in the 

Diaspora. Working on a series enables me 

to revisit and expand upon my ideas, knowing 

that the story rarely ends. 

Caption: Suffern, NY; Die-In for Kimani 

Gray, 2013. Willie Trotman, President of 

NAACP Spring Valley, Community activist 

Ken Mercer and the student community at 

a Die-In protest in Rockland County, NY. 



Above 

Photographer: Shoun Hill 

Exhibit Title: Protests 2020 

These are photographs from 2020 of the protests 

surrounding the murders of unarmed African- 

Americans by police officers in the USA. 

Caption: A participant holds a sign during a vigil and 

coming together for George Floyd, Sunday, May 31, 

2020, in Inwood Park in Manhattan. 

Right 

Photographer: Kevin Bernard Jones 

Exhibit Title: March on Washington 2020—A 

People’s Perspective 

The 2020 March on Washington for racial justice and 

police reform organized by Reverend Al Sharpton and 

the National Action Network after the public murder 

of George Floyd just months before by a Minneapolis 

police officer. Held fifty-seven years after Martin 

Luther King Jr.’s 1963 “I Have a Dream.” 

Bottom 

Photographer: Khary Mason 

Exhibit Title: It is a Difficult Time to Convict a Hero 

In this series, Mason explores media’s influence upon 

society’s perceptions of law enforcement, and the 

silence vs. duty of Black officers in America. 

Caption: Chasing freedom... 


Left 

Photographer: Deja Nycole 

Exhibit Title: Black & Dangerous 

A collaborative project utilizing poetry, 

portraiture, and reportage to redefine the 

way Black people are perceived because of 

stereotypes. 

Caption: Ed Ross, 21, Accokeek, Maryland 

Above 

Photographer: Thaddeus Miles 

Exhibit Title: It Took Me to My Knees! 

Caption: Tired & Ready 

Top: 

Photographer: Burroughs Lamar 

Exhibit Title: National Action Network 

(NAN) March on Washington 

Rev. Al Sharpton’s NAN organization 

brought together masses of people of 

varying ethnicities in a peaceful march that 

included a speech by Martin Luther King 

Jr.’s son MLK,III, leaving a spirit of hopefulness 

that the tragic deaths and injustices 

afflicting Africans Americans for centuries 

will cease the need for future marches. 

Caption: Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. 

Washington, D.C. 



50 / ZEKE FALL 2021 

Top 

Photographer: Tara Pixley 

Exhibit Title: Our Streets 

Taken across multiple 2020 protests 

in Los Angeles, these photos speak to 

the true spirit of the Black Lives Matter 

movement: peaceful showings of solidarity, 

community action, and expressions of 

democratic public assembly in the face of 

COVID-19 and racism’s twin pandemics. 

Caption: People stared with open admiration 

at a Black man on horseback who 

rode in circles carrying the Pan-African 

flag. 

Above 

Photographer: Kenechi Unachukwu 

Exhibit Title: We Still Here 

People from all ages and ethnicities led by 

young Black men and women congregated 

at the capitol to voice their frustrations 

about a system that has led to the wrongful 

death of many Black citizens at the 

hands of the police. 

Right 

Photographer: Michael Young 

Exhibit Title: When Will it be Enough. 

2020—A Year of Resistance 

Caption: Black Issues 1619 -2019. Image 

taken at the Black Lives Matter Harlem 

Street Mural which had been vandalized 

and is under repair.

Top 

Photographer: Sheila Pree 

Bright 

Exhibit Title: #1960Now: Jim 

Crow 2.0 

Growing up in the Jim Crow 

era, my parents never spoke of 

their experiences until Trayvon 

Martin’s death by police brutality. 

My mother said, “I didn’t 

want you to hate white people. I 

can’t believe I would see the day 

that Black people’s oppression 

still exists.” 

Caption: Statue of Dr. Martin 

Luther King Jr. by Jamaican-born 

Basil Watson installed in 2021, 

Atlanta, GA. 

Lower Left 

Photographer: Eva Woolridge 

Exhibit Title: We are Not Free 

Until We are All Free 

An exhibition that discusses 

the relationship between all 

marginalized groups who are in 

the fight to live freely as they 

are, with images from marches 

for Black Lives, Palestine, and 

Black Trans Lives. Because we 

all matter. 

Caption: True Patriot. 

Above 

Photographer: Reece T. 

Williams 

Exhibit Title: On the 

Anniversary of My Profound 

Confusion 

My earnest attempt to not only 

chronicle the 2020 marches 

for Black lives and living, but 

to understand how and why 

this moment, out of all the 

moments, was chosen as “a 

reckoning,” and how only now? 


Interview 

JOSEPH RODRIGUEZ 

Joseph Rodriguez is a New York-based photographer 

whose career spans over 25 years. His 

work has been published in National Geographic, 

The New York Times Magazine, Mother Jones, 

Newsweek, New York Magazine and others. He 

teaches at NYU and the International Center 

for Photography (ICP), among others, and has 

published several books including, more recently: 

Taxi: A Journey Through My Window 1977-1987 

and LAPD 1994. Below is an excerpt from our 

conversation, edited for clarity. 

By Caterina Clerici 

Caterina Clerici: Can you tell us about 

your background and how you got 

started in photography? 

and then dropped out and then got into 

the drug scene, started doing heroin, 

selling heroin, all that bad boy stuff. I 

went to Rikers Island. First time I went in, I 

was 17 years old. The second time I was 

20, and I was a much tougher guy than 

when I first went in. Rikers Island is not 

a place that I can even describe to you. 

How horrible that place is, that’s a whole 

other story. 

However, I came out at a very interesting 

time because I felt the need to change 

and those were the times of affirmative 

action, the only way for most young people 

to go to college without the ugly bank 

loans we have today. Through education 

I got myself together: got off methadone 

at 26, got my GED and studied graphic 

arts technology at the New York City 

Technical College in downtown Brooklyn. 

In 1980, I came out of school — first one 

to go to college in my family — and got 

a job in the printing business. You would 

send us your chromes, and we would 

make negatives, make plates and put 

them on a printing press. I learned a lot 

about color and printing and that helped 

my photography later on. 

I was making a lot of money in ‘80, 

‘81, doing all those big ads you see 

on the front pages of magazines, but I 

found myself going back down a rabbit 

hole, working 50, 60 hours a week. It 

was a great experience, but I was really 

unhappy. So I quit my job. My mother 

was very upset. I went back to driving 

a cab (taking photos that made up Taxi: 

Journey Through My Windows 1977- 

1987) and worked with a friend who had 

a truck and an art moving business. 

One day we delivered to a gallery in 

Soho where Larry Clark was laying his 

whole life’s work up on the wall. I went 

up to him as if he was Jimi Hendrix, like, 

“Oh, man! I really want to do what you 

do!” and he said: “Just go make pictures.” 

That’s all he said to me. 

I went to ICP and started assisting in 

the dark room, cleaning up the cibachrome 

lab. Then they gave me a scholarship 

and my life changed. I was schooled 

by some of the greatest Magnum photographers: 

Gilles Peress, Susan Meiselas, 

Eugene Richards, Alex Webb, Raymond 

Depardon, Sebastiao Salgado. The way 

I work is the way they work. For weeks, 

months and years. Anything personal is 

going to take me years. I’m just coming 

off following Mexican migrants throughout 

the USA for 10 years. 

I think about photography in time, and 

I always felt great work takes a lot of it. 

And, for me, it was always self-initiated. 

There were no editors, no one telling me 

Joseph Rodriguez: I was born and 

raised in Brooklyn in 1951. I grew up 

where I live right now, Park Slope, but it 

was South Brooklyn then. And you know, 

the Italian American history in New York 

was very strong. It was a very mafioso 

neighborhood and I’m not lying — we 

had the Gowanus Canal and it was not 

unusual for us to see floating bodies… It 

was pretty much like the old Sicilian way. 

In my Catholic school there were 

only about 400 or 500 of us. There was 

one Black kid and one Puerto Rican kid: 

me. The other kids were all mostly from 

Genoa, in Italy. Every single parent who 

lived close by used to grow grapes in 

the backyard and you would stop by to 

try their wine. It was very old school. 

But then the drugs came, and that’s what 

brought a lot of the same problems you 

have in so many other places. 

I lost my way… got into high school 

A young 18th Street Gang member being arrested. At the time this photo was taken the ATF (Arms Tobacco and 

Firearms) were working with LAPD to try and take down one of the most notorious gangs in Los Angeles. The aim 

was also to get as many guns off the streets as possible. Photo by Joseph Rodriguez from LAPD 1994. 


what to do. We just had that practice, 

that discipline, which also brings a lot 

of anxiety because you’re swimming 

upstream and you’re always alone. The 

practice is mapping out a story, which 

then turns into something longer — like 

when I went to LA in 1992 to photograph 

gangs and I’m still revisiting that project 

some 20 years later. 

CC: Can you tell us how your project 

on gang violence in LA started, how it 

evolved, and the challenges you faced? 

JR: When the Rodney King uprising 

happened, immediately I wanted to 

go, because I was missing America 

(Rodriguez was living in Europe at the 

time) and I understand the urban narrative, 

no matter which city it is — Chicago, 

Miami, New York, LA. I couldn’t do much 

research while I was living in Europe, 

because it wasn’t like now where everything’s 

online, but one thing I did was listen 

to music: all this gangsta rap, Eazy-E, 

Tupac, Dre, N.W.A., Public Enemy. The 

rhymes they were spitting out were the 

newspapers of the streets. So I was listening 

to guys like this Chicano rapper Kid 

Frost, who’s totally East LA, and I was like 

“Ok, I gotta go there.” 

I flew in the middle of the night from 

Stockholm to LA and arrived in my hotel 

room. I didn’t know where I was going, 

I had no connections and LA is huge! 

So I grabbed three newspapers, turned 

on the news and of course there was a 

funeral and a drive-by shooting every 

minute. 

There was a lot of ground to cover, 

so I stayed five weeks and worked 

really hard. No sleep, just worked and 

drove around, from one neighborhood 

to another, also with the cops doing the 

gang unit. But I knew our history already. 

I began interviewing African-American 

families in Watts, asking what was the 

difference with the riots in 1965, in the 

era when Malcolm X and Robert Kennedy 

were assassinated and there was a lot 

of city streets burning. The conversation 

began and it opened up doors, and I 

realized I wasn’t interested in just the 

guns or the people dying. This was a 

generational story that went back three or 

Waiting for a fare outside 220 West Houston Street, an after-after-hours club. New York 1984. Photo by Joseph 

Rodriguez from Taxi: A Journey Through My Window 1977-1987. 

four generations. That’s when I really felt 

the power of this story. 

I went back to Stockholm and we published 

what we could. I applied for an artist 

grant there, and then I moved to LA in 

September of ‘92. It was hard, I had left 

the kids behind and just kept flying back, 

trying not to be the absentee father that I 

was. But that was the path I was on. 

The gang project was very hard to 

do and I paid the psychological price 

for it, in terms of PTSD. At least eleven 

kids are dead, in the East Side Stories: 

Gang Life in East L.A. book. Children 

were dying and parents were telling me 

I needed to tell this story. Plus, sometimes 

people thought I was an undercover cop. 

I showed them my Spanish Harlem book 

and my National Geographic stories to 

prove that I wasn’t a cop, but paranoia 

runs deep in the hood. That hung over my 

head for a while — until the book was 

published — and I was going to quit the 

project, I felt I couldn’t handle it. 

I also had guys come say to me: “Yo, 

man, I’m about to go do a hit, you can 

come and just take pictures.” This is ethics. 

I said: “Look, I go with you, I photograph 

you doing this scene. Detectives 

come, they find out who’s who, they 

take my film and they use the evidence 

against you.” Some of the gang members 

were 16 years old; they didn’t know how 

the law worked. They didn’t understand 

what a camera could do. They were so 

enamored by their vanity and Hollywood 

influence. With a camera comes a lot of 

responsibility. 

CC: How did your surroundings while 

growing up influence your practice and 

your understanding of photography, as 

well as your mission as a “humanist”, as 

you often define yourself? 

JR: I grew up with my mother and her 

sisters, and there were no men in my family. 

My stepfather was a dope fiend who 

died on the streets. There were a lot of 

not nice things growing up, and that was 

very tough for me. 

One thing I remember is that my mom 

would sit with her sisters in a very old 

school, Italian way, they would have their 

coffee and talk about the men. I would 

hear these stories — it was unbelievable 

— of abuse and cheating, and those references 

helped me develop a feminine eye. 

I’m always asking myself: “Why did 

this photographer go photograph a gangster 

with guns, bullets and drugs, but then 

didn’t photograph a mother at the same 

time, or the struggling parent?” That’s 

always been very important in my work. I 

didn’t always go for the guns. 

“Raised in violence, I enacted my own 

violence upon the world and upon myself. 

What saved me was the camera, its ability 

to gaze upon, to focus, to investigate, 

to reclaim, to resist, to re-envision.” That 

quote is from my journal. That’s how I 

got here, that’s where this goal comes 

from. That’s why I went back for East Side 

Stories (Rodriguez’s long-term project 

about gang violence in LA, shot between 

1992–2017.) 

Continued on page 70. 


But before delving into how documentary 

photography is evolving, it is essential 

to first address the fight to change 

the internal practices and structure of the 

photo industry itself. 

One of the biggest problems in 

photography is the widespread percep- 

Years ago, 

tion among audiences that photographs 

during an artist talk at a journalism 

conference, I stated that I the extent to which a photographer’s 

don’t lie. Most people don’t understand 

don’t believe documentary photographs 

create social change. A consume. This knee-jerk assumption of 

personal biases impact the images we 

colleague stood up and interrupted my objectivity allows audiences to accept 

talk to disagree with me. Our impromptu an image as truth: forming hard-andfast 

opinions about events and cultures. 

debate--across an audience of photographers 

and journalism students--exemplifies Without critical assessment from the viewers, 

the photographer has tremendous 

an important dialog within our industry 

that is pushing the boundaries of how power over the value viewers assign to 

photography is created and used. Our the lives of the individuals pictured. Such 

power and representation have plagued 

the industry since the advent of photography 

as a medium. Recent momentum 

in acknowledging and changing these 

practices prompted the formation of 

collectives such as Women Photograph, 

MFON, Diversify Photo, Ingenious 

Photograph, and the Authority Collective, 

to name a few. Meaningful reflection 

about representation, connection, and 

accountability are imperative starting 

points for anyone assigning, publishing, 

Photography & 

By Emily Schiffer 

disagreement hinged on different definitions 

of what “social change” looks like 

and means. I was asserting that images 

create awareness--which unreliably 

evokes empathy, shifts mindsets, and 

inspires action. He was arguing that 

empathy is change. We were both right. 

Differentiating between raising awareness, 

fostering empathy, inspiring action, 

and changing conditions enables photographers 

to precisely define their goals 

and approaches for individual projects. 

A whole world opens up when 

we think of images as the start 

of a creative process—rather 

than the end goal. 

unchallenged authority creates a dangerous 

paradigm. Historically, photographers 

have been overwhelmingly white 

and male, which means they produced 

images of cultures, communities, and 

people that were not familiar to them. 

On top of that, editors, curators, critics, 

and other industry gatekeepers have 

also historically been white and male, 

which further normalizes the white male 

gaze within the industry writ large, and 

silencing other perspectives. This set-up 

causes glaring omissions in documentary 

narratives. Practically speaking, 

omissions amount to erasure, which is a 

quintessential tactic of colonialism and 

oppression. Despite important changes 

in who is able to access the profession, 

and in how we think about photography, 

statistics show that the demographics of 

the industry remain largely unchanged. 

In 2020, 80% of A1 images in leading 

U.S. and European newspapers were 

created by male photographers. Issues of 

exhibiting, or creating photographs, let 

alone those attempting to create social 

change through photography. 

Sometimes, viewers need to physically 

see the errors in the dominant narrative 

in order to shift their mindset. Artists such 

as Alexandra Bell, Wendy Red Star, 

and Tonika Lewis Johnson visualize the 

crisis of biased representation, enabling 

viewers to reflect on their perceptions 

of self and others. Bell redacts racist 

language in New York Times articles and 

sometimes changes the imagery to reflect 

a more accurate depiction of the facts. 

She then wheatpastes the before and 

after versions of the articles onto outdoor 

public walls: simultaneously holding the 

media accountable, and forcing viewers 

to confront their complacency when 

consuming media. Similarly, Red Star 

annotates photographs of Crow chiefs, 

originally taken by Charles Milton Bell in 

1880. Red Star uses red ink to provide 

historical and contextual information, 


Photo by Dawnee LeBeau. From Women of the 

Tetonwan, a portrait project celebrating the matriarchs 

of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe in South Dakota. 

Winona Kasto is one of our Lakota Lolihan' (cooks). 

It's a great honor to be able to offer food as nourishment 

and healing, especially at ceremonies and 

community events. 

with individuals directly impacted by the 

issues their work addresses. Still, for others 

who photograph solo, like Dawnee 

LeBeau, an ongoing and deep community 

dialog dictates what is created and 

shared. It is worth noting that all of the 

aforementioned photographers identify 

as part of the communities they document. 

Even people depicting their own 

cultures need accountability, and ceding 

power enriches photographic work. 

Listening, critical discourse, and reflection 

Social Change 

on one’s own biases are even more vital 

for outsiders. 

thereby informing the viewer and commenting 

on non-Indigenous people’s lack 

of knowledge about Indigenous culture 

and history. Aware of how profoundly the 

media impacts our sense of self, Johnson 

created Englewood Rising, a communityled 

billboard campaign created and 

paid for with funds raised by Englewood 

residents and activists to, “showcase 

Englewood’s everyday beauty and 

counter its damage-centered narrative.” 

Created by the community, for the community, 

and in the community, this wildly 

popular project demonstrates how well 

someone from the community can portray 

other members within it. 

Discussions about representation 

and whether or not a solo perspective is 

always desirable have prompted photographers 

to share authorship and power 

in the image-making process. More 

horizontal approaches sometimes take 

the form of a collective voice, composed 

of many professional photographers, as 

is the case with Kamoinge (founded in 

1963), a collective working to “HONOR, 

document and preserve the history and 

culture of the African Diaspora with 

integrity and insight for humanity through 

the lens of Black photographers.” Other 

artists, like Brenda Anne Kenneally, facilitate 

decade-long photography workshops 

With the politics of representation 

fresh on our minds, and 

the raising of awareness as a 

baseline, we will look at examples 

of photographers leading 

our industry in a more responsible, 

and impactful direction. 

Whether making images collaboratively, 

using them to create conversations, 

creatively installing them in communities, 

or amplifying existing grassroots 

organizing, these projects engender 

active engagement from both the people 

impacted by these issues and the viewers 

seeing these projects--even when there is 

not an easy or clear solution. 

More → 



Projects 

That Inspire 

Introspection 

and 

Challenge 

Oppressive 

Narratives 

Ariana Faye Allensworth 

Staying Power 

Ariana Faye Allensworth’s 

background in social work, 

urban studies, African 

American studies, 

and education enables her to 

deconstruct power imbalances 

in the photo industry. 

Her latest project Staying 

Power, implements her critique 

of how photography is 

taught, and how narratives are 

constructed and consumed. 

Staying Power is “a collaborative, 

multidisciplinary art and research project 

celebrating the people’s history of New 

York City public housing. The project 

offers counter-narratives to the stereotypes 

surrounding the New York City 

Housing Authority (NYCHA) through 

the lens of residents raised and living in 

NYCHA.” 

The project emerged out of 

Allensworth’s collaborative work at the 

Anti-Eviction Mapping Project (AEMP): 

visualizing injustice by mapping open 

data, collecting oral histories, producing 

storytelling projects in collaboration 

with tenants, facilitating mutual aid, and 

researching real estate speculation and 

corporate landlordism. 

At AEMP, Allensworth worked closely 

with residents displaced by the demolition 

and downsizing of public housing. 

New York City, home to the largest public 

housing stock in the United States, is 

privatizing and defunding many public 

housing programs, a radical shift in 

how these programs are managed and 

operated. “It’s an important moment to 

document public housing reform, and 

to create room for people’s narratives,” 

explains Allensworth. The dominant 

‘failed public housing’ narrative stood 

in stark contrast to the breadth of lived 

experiences residents described. 

Housed online, Staying Power is a 

platform for publishing, discussing, and 

presenting the NYCHA community’s 

histories. The content is also available 

through an open-ended series of booklets 

and postcards, distributed to subscribers 

through the postal service. 

The project explores how this community 

creates, cares for, and 

builds their own archives. 

“Memory is a valuable historical 

resource,” explains 

Allensworth. “Staying 

Power explores how 

photography, ephemeral 

and personal collections 

of objects, and interviews 

with residents can offer 

alternative modes of knowledge 

that retell the public housing story. The 

project positions residents as archivists 

and storytellers.” Allensworth’s goal is to 

refute stereotypes that eclipse people’s 

lived experiences, and assert that all residents 

are worthy of inclusion in NYCHA 

history. 

To gather material, Allensworth 

facilitated photography workshops, 

conducted long-form oral histories, and 

photographed ephemera. Teaching 

photography as a way of collaboratively 

building narratives poses a challenge: on 

the one hand, taking someone’s creativity 

seriously by helping them develop 

their craft is the ultimate form of respect. 

On the other hand, traditional photoeducation 

practices—which literally teach 

how to see—undermine the message that 

Image by Ariana Faye Allensworth. A poster created 

for Staying Power featuring an image of Michael Casiano, 

a resident of LaGuardia Houses on the Lower 

East Side of Manhattan. 

everyone’s perspective and story is valid. 

Allensworth didn’t want her aesthetic 

preferences to influence the work residents 

created. She structured her workshops 

using the “Photo Voice” model, 

inviting participants to create visual 

answers to questions about their public 

housing experience. Instead of focusing 

on aesthetics, the group discussed the 

messages the images delivered, and critiqued 

the artists’ visual communication. 

Similarly, Allensworth’s method of 

collecting oral histories positioned the 

narrator to author their own story: “I 

don’t show up with a predetermined set 

of questions, so they’re not reduced to 

whatever container I create for them. 

They decide what it is that they want to 

put on record.” 

Though created primarily for NYCHA 

residents, Staying Power is also an important 

resource for educators, activists, and 

policy makers looking to counter erasure, 

claim space, and amplify residents’ 

experiences without filtering them through 

a third party lens. 


Empathy and 

Healing as 

Social Change 

Rosem Morton 

Dear Survivor 

The pandemic of sexual assault 

is often presented through the 

lens of statistics: Every 68 

seconds an American 

is sexually assaulted. Every 9 

minutes, that victim is a child. 

Nine out of every ten victims 

of rape are female. 48% of 

victims were sleeping or at 

home. Research tends to focus 

on who is assaulted, by whom, 

where and when. What happens 

afterwards is understudied. What happens 

afterwards is profoundly important. 

We know that most survivors suffer in 

silence. And we know that most survivors 

continue to live. Rosem Morton created 

Dear Survivor to make resilience accessible 

instead of elusive. Designed to build 

community, Dear Survivor is a collaborative 

photo project, workbook, podcast, 

and resource platform exploring what it 

means to survive sexual trauma. 

Housed online, the project is a sort of 

one-stop resource for survivors and their 

allies. Morton explains, “Our website 

hosts a growing audio-visual collection 

empowering sexual trauma survivors 

through the expression of their own narratives. 

These stories highlight survivor 

experiences, illustrate the prevalence of 

sexual violence, and question how we 

can break this cycle.” 

Dear Survivor grew out of Morton’s 

creative exploration of her own trauma. 

“I tried to make sense of it by looking 

inward and photographing myself.” The 

process of making and sharing these 

images brought connection with other 

people, as well as new trauma. 

Not everyone knows how 

to be an ally, and Morton 

found that overall support 

for survivors is lacking. 

Still, her work resonated 

with viewers, and she 

was inundated with survivors 

confiding in her, often 

breaking their own silence. 

They, too, craved connection, 

community, healing, resources, and allies 

who knew how to support them. Morton 

decided to photograph other survivors, 

but quickly bumped up against the constraints 

of traditional documentary photography. 

She decided people needed to 

tell their own stories, and that she needed 

to embrace all forms of expression. Many 

of Morton’s participants found healing 

through creativity, so Morton set out to 

tap into their artistic processes, believing 

those expressions were as important to 

share as stories of resilience. 

Morton and her participants continue 

to aggregate resources and stories to 

cultivate the space they need. “I haven’t 

found anything out there that delineates 

possible questions, gathers resources, 

and showcases other people surviving.” 

The Survivor Workbook claims strength 

in vulnerability, and looks at what people 

do when pain blocks hope. It includes 

images of survivors’ art, guided questions 

to help people creatively explore their 

trauma journey, letters to survivors, and 

multifaceted resources. The workbook 

Self-portrait by Rosem Morton. The Dear Survivor 

Project features the stories, art and images of 

survivors. 

is housed on the Dear Survivor website, 

alongside Morton’s photographs, 

survivor audio recordings, and a monthly 

podcast. Viewers can respond to stories 

or share their own via a submissions 

portal. Morton continues to expand her 

audience. Her platform is used at mental 

health centers and universities in the U.S. 

and Philippines, and the project is currently 

engaging the public as a travelling 

outdoor exhibition. 

Created for people deep inside the 

healing process, Dear Survivor also 

invites people to shed oppressive cultural 

narratives. It refuses to accept the conditions 

of silence, isolation, and grief. 

Popular narratives use the term “victim” 

instead of “survivor,” and depict people 

forever crippled by their trauma. Morton 

refutes this trope by excluding it from 

her platform. “Although this trauma has 

changed us for the rest of our lives,” 

Morton explains, “we have found ways 

to move forward. It’s important for both 

survivors and the community to see the 

spectrum of our resilience. This is part of 

a more comprehensive narrative about 

survival.” 

More → 



“My debt: not only is it affecting me financially, mentally, 

emotionally, [but also] I want to live like normal 

people. It affects my mom, it affects my dad, and it 

affects my boys. My past is haunting me.” —Keshena, 

who, with interest, owes $50,000 in LFOs. 

Projects That 

Incite Action 

and Change 

Conditions 

Deborah Espinosa 

Living With Conviction: 

Sentenced to Debt for Life in 

Washington State 


Lawyer and photographer 

Deborah Espinosa fuses her documentary 

and legal practices to 

expose how court fees and fines 

criminalize poverty, disproportionately 

punish low-income communities of color, 

and force formerly incarcerated people 

under the lifetime supervision of the 

criminal justice system. Espinosa 

explains, “Since the 1980s, 

people have been sentenced 

not only to prison, but also 

to a lifetime of debt in the 

form of court costs, fines, 

fees, and victim restitution— 

accruing interest at a rate 

of 12%. In Washington State, 

this debt is called Legal Financial 

Obligations or LFOs. The 12% interest 

begins to accrue on the day of sentencing, 

including while a person is in prison. 

At 12%, the original amount imposed 

doubles in five years. Many county courts 

send unpaid accounts to collection agencies, 

who charge an additional 19% to 

50% interest. In Washington State, 80% 

to 90% of criminal defendants cannot 

pay. Once released from prison, a person 

usually has 30 days to make the first 

monthly payment. If they miss too many 

payments, the court may summon them. If 

they fail to appear, they can be arrested.” 

Living With Conviction shares personal 

stories of the impacts of LFOs through 

photography, video, and audio recordings. 

“My goal is to elevate and amplify 

people’s stories, to create a platform for 

people with LFOs to speak on their own 

behalf.” Espinosa asks participants to 

describe how they want to be portrayed, 

choose the setting of their portrait, and 

collaborate on the editing process. Audio 

and video recordings enable people to 

speak for themselves. Espinosa’s work 

enacts change from several angles: 

raising public awareness, connecting 

participants with legal resources, 

and advocating for legislative 

reform. 

LFOs exist in all states, 

yet are rarely included in 

mainstream conversations 

about incarceration or rehabilitation. 

Thus, at the base 

level, Living With Conviction 

accomplishes the important task 

of familiarizing the public with this 

pervasive issue. The project demonstrates 

how the financial pressure of LFOs impact 

entire families: reverberating across 

individuals’ mental health, self-care, 

resilience, rehabilitation, and recovery. 

Keshena, a project participant explains, 

“My debt: not only is it affecting me financially, 

mentally, emotionally, [but also] I 

want to live like normal people. It affects 

my mom, it affects my dad, and it affects 

my boys. My past is haunting me.” 

Espinosa raises awareness among 

new audiences by sharing Living With 

Conviction via public art installations, 

exhibitions, artist talks, publishing 

her work, and providing educational 

resources. She speaks about LFOs alongside 

project participants in schools, community 

centers, and at art institutions. “In 

the end, these are not my stories to tell, 

so it’s important for participants to speak 

directly with audiences. I also do this to 

break down the wall between communities 

with criminal histories and those without. 

We all want the same thing. To take 

care of our families. Connecting in person 

really helps get audiences invested.” 

The project does not stop at awareness. 

Individuals with LFOs are invited 

to connect with legal help. Living With 

Conviction partners with grassroots organizations 

run and facilitated by formerly 

incarcerated individuals such as, I Did the 

Time and the Civil Survival Project, which 

advocate for reform and provide legal 

assistance to people with LFOs. Living 

with Conviction supplements this work 

by training formerly incarcerated leaders 

to prepare court forms to request for a 

reduction of LFOs, and capture stories 

about court-imposed debt for legal advocacy 

and public education. 

Living With Conviction seeks to eliminate 

LFOs. After Espinosa and participants 

made this work available to the 

Washington State Legislature in the form 

of postcards and a magazine, lawmakers 

voted to amend state policy: creating the 

right to a waiver of accrued interest on all 

non-restitution LFOs, and stopping interest 

from accruing on all future non-restitution 

LFOs. Cited as an important influence on 

the legislature’s policy reform, Living With 

Conviction exemplifies the impact of fusing 

photography with activism.

A Home for Global Documentary 

2020 ZEKE Award Winners on display at Photoville on the Brooklyn Piers. 

Social Documentary Network 

Lori Grinker 

SDN Website: A web portal for 

documentary photographers to 

create online galleries and make 

them available to anyone with an 

internet connection. Since 2008, 

we have presented more than 

3,500 documentary stories from 

all parts of the world. 

www.socialdocumentary.net 

ZEKE Magazine: This bi-annual 

publication allows us to present 

visual stories in print form with indepth 

writing about the themes 

of the photography projects. 

www.zekemagazine.com 

ZEKE Award for Documentary 

Photography: A new award 

program juried by a distinguished 

panel of international media 

professionals. Award winners are 

exhibited at Photoville in Brooklyn 

and featured in ZEKE. 

Documentary Matters: 

A place for photographers to 

meet with others involved with 

or interested in documentary 

photography and discuss ongoing 

or completed projects. 

SDN Education: Leading 

documentary photographers and 

educators provide online learning 

opportunities for photographers 

interested in advancing their 

knowledge and skills in the field 

of documentary photography. 

SDN Reviews: Started in April 

2021, this annual program brings 

together industry leaders from 

media, publishing, and the fine 

art community to review work of 

documentary photographers. 

Visual Literacy Project: 

This new and exciting program 

provides secondary students 

and educators with critical tools 

for literacy, learning, and civic 

engagement. 

www.visualliteracyproject.org 

SDN Salon: An informal gathering 

of SDN photographers to 

share and discuss work online. 

Meets the third Wednesday of 

each month 

Join us! 




‘Tia’ (aunt) Sibilla in her hut 

in the village of St Martin de 

Porres, 15,000 feet above the 

sea level, in Peru. 

The Emptying of the Andes 

By Emiliano Pinnizzotto 


There is a very quiet and subtle 

migration taking place in Peru. It is a 

phenomenon of “rural-urban migration” 

that has continued incessantly 

for years, and is emptying the Andes 

of people who are leaving their 

lands under the illusion of a better future in 

the big cities—Lima, Arequipa, Chimbote. 

Many young people have escaped from 

peasant life, only to end up in the favelas 

of these cities, with no light, no gas, 

nor running water. This migratory movement, 

which is emptying the Andes of a 

population that will end up in the slums, is 

referred to as “invasions,” because of the 

unstoppable number of arrivals. 

This photographic project by Italian 

photographer Emiliano Pinnizzotto follows 

the stories both of those who remain in 

their ancestral homes in the mountains, and 

those who left for the big city and found 

themselves passing from an imagined 

dream into a real nightmare. The Emptying 

of the Andes in an attempt to give voice 

to a little-known story that in the next few 

years will empty the mountains of native 

people and culture and fill the cities with 

those seeking a better life but often find 

disappointment instead. 


Photo by Emiliano Pinnizzotto 

Two women come back home with 

their sheep after a day of pasture. 

Grazing sheep is one of the main 

activities in the mountains. Sheep 

are raised principally for milk and 

wool and for their meat. 



“The more we get away from the 

villages, the more human presence 

becomes rare. The men and 

women live in tiny huts made of 

mud, clay and straw, and they live 

on potatoes and corn and the little 

that the land can provide in these 

prohibitive altitudes at 14,000 feet. 




Andrea (25), nursing Angela (4 

months) in her tiny shack made with 

cardboard walls. Angela is the result 

of sexual violence that is prevalent 

in the slums. The mother has another 

child with a mental disability that she 

gave birth to when she was 13 years 

old. Chimbote, Perù 



Photo by Emiliano 

Pinnizzotto 

The first time that a woman 

from the mountains sees a 

jewelry store. 



BOOK 

REVIEWS 

EDITOR: MICHELLE BOGRE 

I CAN MAKE YOU FEEL 

GOOD 

By Tyler Mitchell 

Prestel, 2020 

208 pages | $60 

I 

Can Make You Feel Good, Tyler 

Mitchell’s second monograph, 

evidences and envisions contemporary 

Black joy. His work, which reframes 

Blackness through portraits that challenge 

prevailing racial stereotypes, 

investigates the question: What does the 

pursuit of happiness look like for Black 

Americans? 

Mitchell chronicles unguarded 

moments of tenderness, tranquility, and 

bliss among individual and intimate 

clusters of young Black adults. Dramatic 

silhouettes of sumptuously textured clothing 

are interspersed with soft-focused 

sensual gestures of gentle affection. 

With his cinematic eye and deft use of 

scale, composition, and perspective, he 

animates a fluid compilation of full bleed, 

mostly double-page spreads. 

Mitchell, who was included in the 

Aperture publication and exhibition, The 

New Black Vanguard, pushes the conventions 

of race, beauty, gender and power. 

Aware of, and indebted to, predecessors 

including Roy DeCarava, Gordon 

Parks, Jamel Shabazz and 19th century 

scholar, abolitionist and orator, Frederick 

Douglass, he and his contemporaries 

embrace the role of the Black body and 

Black lives as subject matter. They expand 

the visual culture conversation by documenting 

and challenging their realities of 

presence, absence, invisibility, appropriation, 

desire, and objectification. 

Mitchell’s images are subversive in 

their disruption of what writer Junot Diaz 

coins as the ‘default whiteness’ of our 

American society. They are transgressive 

in their assertion of a reality beyond 

conventional representation. The wraparound 

cover image is an apt example of 

Mitchell’s intentional tableaux: It shows 

five young shirtless men, three of which 

face away from the camera with heads 

bent, another is partially seen, his face 

in profile, gazing somewhat pensively 

across a flowering meadow to the edge 

of a tree-lined woods. The fifth person, 

and the only one facing the camera, has 

his face in shadow as he seemingly tightens 

the black belt at his waist. A thick, 

intertwined chain of silver metal catches 

the available light and grabs the attention 

of the viewer. A white string of cotton is 

tied as a single, loose bracelet on the 

wrist of his active hand. The choice of 

adornment and fashion accessory could 

be codifiers of modes of bondage and 

tools of slavery, and intersect with the 

understated but obvious designer labels 

of Valentino jeans (which retail for close 

to $1000) and Ben Sherman underwear 

(a fashion brand noted for attracting 

youth culture). 

Images of leisurely 

picnics are sequenced with 

people at play, frolicking 

and actively engaging with 

hula hoops, skateboards, 

jump ropes, and a kite. 

Mitchell acknowledges his 

reference to Tamir Rice, the 

12-year-old Black boy shot 

in a Cleveland park in 2014 

while carrying a toy gun. 

Mitchell also reframes the 

connotation of the hoodie, 

following its presence in 

the 2012 killing of 17-yearold 

Trayvon Martin. Two 

images purportedly use the 

same man wearing a plush 

cotton, powder-blue hooded 

sweatshirt while lying on 

a wooden floor. The first 

features him face down 

framed in a horizontal position with his 

open-palmed hands interlaced behind his 

back. In the second, he is face-up, with 

his head, shoulders and arms filling the 

bottom of the frame, his hands tentatively 

holding the soft hood, a wide-eyed listful 

expression, looking just above the gaze 

of the viewer. Both images imply the 

notion of an arrest and a mug shot. 

A final example of Mitchell’s purposeful 

challenge to codified visual language 

is a vertical image of a man standing 

in front of a peeling red-painted cement 

wall. He wears flowing white pants 

spilling over sleek brown leather loafers. 

A green fabric sac, is held in hand, a billowing 

bright yellow piece of silk is hung 

with clothespins from black electrical 

cording suspended above, obscuring his 

head and torso. 

This bold abstraction of Pan African 

colors is perhaps a nod to poet, playwright, 

and activist, Amiri Baraka, who 

saw Black beauty as an act of justice. 

His poem, Why Is We Americans? 

proclaims, “What is the use of being 

ethereal and being escapist and romantic? 

Take the words and make them into 

bullets. Take the words and make them 

do something.” Tyler Mitchell’s images 

create visual text to explode imagination 

and claim sovereignty. 

—J. Sybylla Smith 

©Tyler Mitchell. 


OUR TOWN 

by Michael von Graffenried 

Steidl, 2021 

121 pages | $50 

“ 

The only way to achieve realistic 

pictures is to steal them,” says 

Swiss photographer Michael 

von Graffenried (MvG as he calls 

himself), whose most recent book, Our 

Town, illustrates both the art of the steal 

and MvG’s chosen path bringing people 

together, or not. In Our Town, MvG catalogs 

the divisions of racism in a small 

town in America by photographing who 

he observes—whites with whites and 

Blacks with Blacks. There are common 

moments that chronicle people together: 

high school events, sports, political gatherings, 

a wedding, a barbershop and 

a strip bar. In the latter photograph, a 

white male in erotic contact with a Black 

dancer sadly illustrates the disparity that 

is less blatantly represented throughout 

Our Town. 

MvG prefers using an old rotating lens 

35mm Widelux film camera which has a 

140 degree wide angle view because, 

he says, he can hold the camera next to 

his chest, and take photos without looking 

through the viewfinder. “Today, photography 

is no longer real...People know you 

are coming and are putting on a show. 

They are never themselves. That’s why 

I use this camera. You can take photos 

without looking through the viewfinder 

and nobody notices when you are actually 

pressing the shutter button. It’s the 

only way to achieve realistic pictures,” he 

said in a 2010 interview with Hans Ulrich 

Obrist, held in the Serpentine Gallery, 

Kensington Court, London. 

Holding a large Widelux camera at 

chest level does not make a photographer 

invisible. It does increase MvG’s opportunity 

to steal a picture by circumventing the 

scene-altering effect of asking permission 

to make a picture. MvG’s mandate to 

bring people together seems to be related 

to his camera’s ability to register everything 

within its field of view. With the use 

of this slow-tech camera technique, he 

slices a story from his chosen environment 

with an impressive mastery. 

In 2006, MvG began his Our Town 

project for the 300th anniversary of the 

founding of New Bern, North Carolina. 

The town was founded in 1710 by 

MvG’s own Swiss ancestor Christoph 

von Graffenried, who had traveled to 

the Americas in 1710 and established 

what became the sister city to Bern, 

Switzerland. 

After MvG’s first exhibition, New 

Bern’s local newspaper, the Sun 

Journal, ran the front page headline, 

“Swiss Photos of City Nixed.” The 

article by Sue Book reported “Many 

of those on the 300th Anniversary 

Celebration Committee and the Swiss 

Bear Development Corporation board 

thought Michael von Graffenried’s images 

showed New Bern in an unflattering, 

even racist, light.” The newspaper also 

reported that neither sponsoring agency 

would help to publish the photographs. 

That response did not deter MvG from 

spending multiple years on his project. 

He returned to New Bern after the killing 

of George Floyd to photograph the 

underserved Black community. In the 

book, he combines his original pictures 

with his more recent work. He described 

his creative process to Swiss Television in 

2007, “. . . First, I want to understand if 

I’ve understood something. I try to put it 

in a frame that explains daily life. I try to 

condense a story within one picture. I am 

convinced a picture tells more about the 

person who is looking at it than about the 

one who took it.” 

But the most successful pictures are not 

about the photographer or the viewer. 

Great pictures are about what is inside 

the picture frame. MvG admits that he is 

not a creator of iconic images. For him, 

each photograph must be the story. There 

are no photo captions or text, other than 

his 124 word introduction. He intends his 

panoramic views to chronicle both the 

subject and the background details of a 

complex reality. The reader is invited to 

take cues from the book’s 120 images. 

Many of his amazing compositions reveal 

uncomfortable situations that are daily life 

in New Bern. MvG is a late witness to the 

plague of racism in America. There is the 

hope that this testament will contribute to 

the end of the racism common throughout 

the United States. 

—Frank Ward 


SEEING SILICON VALLEY: 

LIFE INSIDE A FRAYING 

AMERICA 

By Mary Beth Meehan and 

Fred Turner 

The University of Chicago Press, 2021 

112 pages | $25 

Silicon Valley, stretching from the 

San Francisco Bay south to San 

Jose, CA, conjures images of 

innovative start-up technology companies 

led by young, glamorous entrepreneurs, 

mostly white men (think Steve Jobs, Mark 

Zuckerberg or Elon Musk) with enormous 

wealth and prosperity. Photographer 

Mary Beth Meehan and Silicon Valley 

culture expert Fred Turner dispel this myth 

in their compelling new book Seeing 

Silicon Valley that shows a view of the 

region that has rarely been seen before. 

It is a place steeped in inequity, reliant 

on foreign-born 

labor, vastly 

segregated by 

race and class 

and riddled 

with broken 

promises and 

unrealized 

dreams. As the 

book’s inner 

jacket says, 

“[I]ts beautiful landscape lies atop underground 

streams of pollutants left behind 

by decades of technological innovation, 

while its billionaires live in compounds 

surrounded by security gates and redwood 

trees, its service employees live in 

their cars.” 

Meehan resided in Silicon Valley for 

six months so she could live alongside her 

subjects. The result is a powerful collection 

of 33 portraits and stories of workers 

of varying gender, ages, and races— 

Black, Asian, Indian, Hispanic, Iranian, 

Mexico, Salvadoran, Polish and Native 

American. We see portraits of people 

struggling to make ends meet living 

alongside those buying $2 million homes. 

Cristobal (only first names are used in 

the book), a contract security worker 

at Facebook and a U.S. Army veteran, 

doesn’t earn enough to own a home, so 

he lives in a colorful shed in a backyard 

Copyright Mary Beth Meehan, reprinted with permission from Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying 

America by Mary Beth Meehan, published by the University of Chicago Press © 2021. 

in Mountain View. Mary, from Uganda, 

says: “ In Africa, you are never alone. 

This place is lonely, It is lonely. Lonely.” 

Meehan’s portraits always convey 

dignity and humanity. Her subjects pose 

directly at the camera, head cocked 

to the side, with confident half smiles, 

without anger, pity or sadness, despite 

their precarious economic situations. 

Meehan also has a strong eye for color, 

making each scene beautiful despite the 

dissonance. Imelda’s modest doorway 

to her trailer has a bouquet of flowers 

pasted up at the entry. Leslie, a young 

Native American NASA worker who has 

struggled with gender bias, has colorful 

tattoos. Diane, shown in her sprawling 

well-decorated home, ironically notes that 

very young people now have too much 

money. “There’s no spiritual feelings, just 

materialism,” she says. 

Melissa and Steve lost their 19-yearold 

daughter when a cluster of teen 

suicides happened in 2009 and 2014. 

Steve says his daughter was too sensitive 

and that kids “don’t learn about their 

feelings or how to express them: how to 

keep’em inside, how to get on with it. 

How to achieve. We think we’re Silicon 

Valley, we’re the products of Silicon 

Valley...and we’re really humans trying 

to survive under the facade that everyone 

sees.” A photo of Stevie’s suicide note is 

given a full page. 

Unexpected details like these expose 

how complex Silicon Valley really is, 

letting down everyone caught up in its 

allure. The book’s layout also contrasts 

photos of a memorial in a Buddhist 

temple or a grandmother’s pearls in a 

teal jar with cold, empty parking lots 

or sprawling cement buildings, a lone 

Amazon voice- controlled smart device on 

a shelf, the glass windows of Oracle and 

the dark windows of the Facebook shuttle 

bus. This seeming calm belies the tension 

that exists in daily life. 

While Meehan provides more than 

a glimpse of these Valley residents by 

providing short stories, often it isn’t enough 

to paint a full picture of the person. It left 

me wanting more. Meehan says in her 

closing essay that “the sense of distress 

was pervasive” and that her subjects said 

how hard it was to find balance, connection 

and community. However, ironically, 

her portraits don’t always convey this—her 

subjects appear calm, content and dignified, 

perhaps adding to the dystopia. The 

book’s cover features Teresa, originally from 

Mexico, who operates a food truck where 

she prepares Mexican food for Silicon 

Valley clientele— employees at Tesla, students 

at Stanford, or shoppers at the Whole 

Foods in Cupertino. In the portrait, she 

appears self-assured and confident. 

The last spread shows a former landfill 

area near Facebook offices in Menlo Park 

silhouetted by a beautiful sunrise suggesting 

that maybe there is hope for a new 

day in Silicon Valley. Not so fast, say 

Meehan and Turner. The final image is of 

an Amazon Ring surveillance camera. 

The lingering feeling I had after reading 

this book is that we are all prisoners to 

technology and so is the American Dream. 

—Barbara Ayotte 


NECESSARY FICTIONS 

By Debi Cornwall 

Radius Books, 2020 

324 pages | $55 

A 

sign of an interesting book is 

that it is legible through many 

lenses. There are at least one 

thousand ways to read Debi Cornwall’s 

Necessary Fictions, and I recommend to 

try them all. A particular thing 

to notice, when one looks 

through these lenses, is that 

with every read, though the 

words and images stay the 

same, the book changes. 

The story begins in a land 

far, far away. Specifically, at 

35˚ 03’ 09.00” N 70˚ 54’ 

27.00” E. But, in fact, this 

book does not take place 

in Afghanistan, rather much 

closer to home. Necessary Fictions is the 

result of Cornwall’s multi-year documentation, 

which began in 2016, of U.S. 

military training exercises taking place 

on domestic military bases made up to 

replicate Middle-Eastern soil; the stage 

for a pre-deployment dress rehearsal. In 

these bases, soldiers play war, reacting 

to potential scenarios they may encounter 

in the field. Necessary Fictions leaves no 

prop stone unturned, featuring images 

of soldiers dressed in Hollywood quality 

wounds, clean-shaven Afghan role-players, 

and the silent mosques that are at the 

heart of made-up ‘ville. 

What is strange about the book is that 

it’s not so strange. The images are eerily 

familiar: a close-up of brightly colored 

prayer beads, a shot from above of a 

woman in a hijab, a portrait of a solemn 

soldier. But it isn’t the images that have 

been seen before, it’s their type. They’re 

almost all there; a history of war photography 

captured in images of a fake war. 

At the beginning of photography, there 

were slow cameras. With such a camera 

on the battlefield, the photographer was 

left to capture the stillness of war, such as 

the campgrounds, the waiting, and the 

injured. This limitation historically led to 

artistic liberties in war photography, such 

as staging portraits or moving a body here 

and there. These were the first visual war 

stories, those which shaped the collective 

perception of violence. Such images of 

stillness, framed in familiar composition, 

are repeated throughout the book: in the 

images of sand that doesn’t move and 

in the expression of wounded soldiers, 

seated to be frozen in time. 

As war imagery infiltrated news and 

entertainment, and as news and entertainment 

became intertwined, cinematic 

tropes took over. At 

times the book itself 

feels like a film manuscript, 

with clippings 

and research, inserts 

and images, interviews 

and scenes. In 

one sequence from 

Necessary Fictions, yellow 

gas fills the frame of 

one image, followed by 

a helicopter in the sky, 

and in one’s head The Doors’ song from 

the opening sequence of Apocalypse 

Now begins to play. 

One wonders, are films inspired by 

war, or is it the other way around? This 

co-dependence of fact and fiction guides 

Necessary Fictions. It is found in the 

array of quotes about film and politics, 

and in images that are both too realistic 

and too movielike. Cornwall herself plays 

into this tension. When the reader starts 

to believe her too much, she retracts, 

letting go of her authority as omniscient 

storyteller. In between her believability 

and the breadcrumbs of doubt flows the 

liquid river of truth. 

If fact and faction are intertwined, one 

is left to consider under which circumstances 

fiction may become fact. An idea 

suggested by the book is that in the training 

exercises, and perhaps more broadly, 

what is important is not reality but the 

feeling that something is real. Honing 

in on the definition of Post-Traumatic 

Stress Disorder (PTSD), Cornwall writes 

that PTSD may be brought on by an 

event experienced by an individual or 

by a loved one. That is to say, a story— 

hearing about a loved one’s traumatic 

experience—has the capacity to trigger 

real stress disorder. From this stem two 

important questions: what are the real 

implications of fiction (an interpretation 

rather than lived experience) and is interpretation 

comparable with reality? 

These questions function as the DNA 

chains of necessary 

fictions, through which 

all other ideas interweave. 

Despite its beauty 

and in part because 

of it, this is not an 

easy book to read. No 

matter which lens readers 

choose to wear, 

their ears will ring 

with explosions and 

their nose will fill with 

unmentionable smells. 

But when the smoke 

has cleared and the 

wounds rinsed off, the 

questions will remain. 

And though the words 

and images stayed 

the same, has reality 

changed? 

—Dana Melaver 


BRIEFLY 

NOTED 

WITNESSES TO WAR: THE 

CHILDREN OF SYRIA 

By Bassam Khabieh (Introduction 

by Alia Malek) 

de.Mo, 2021 

200 pages | $30 

Bassam Khabieh’s images in 

Witnesses to War are not typical 

conflict photographs. Rather, 

they reflect eight years of life within 

rebel-held Eastern Ghouta, said to be the 

oldest continuously inhabited city in the 

world. In the photos, children and their 

families hold onto fragments of normalcy 

through bombed-out schools conducted 

in basements, street games played in the 

temporary lull of battle, and events and 

holidays celebrated with joy and love 

under tenuous conditions. Khabieh says, 

“I want you, the viewer, to see the war 

through the eyes of children. We could 

not keep Syrian children safe, but maybe 

my photographs can make a difference 

to ensure that no one ever forgets.” 

The book, edited by Amy Yenkin and 

Leslie Thomas, is written in both English 

and Arabic. Its import is enhanced by 

an introductory essay and interview by 

acclaimed writer Alia Malek (The Home 

That Was Our Country: A Memoir of 

Syria), Bassam’s personal vignettes, and 

a timeline of the major elements of the 

long conflict. One hundred percent of 

the proceeds of book sales will go to 

outreach, advocacy, and the support of 

Syrian refugee youth and communities 

through Karam Foundation. 

The award winning photojournalist did 

not start out as a photographer. When the 

war broke out in Syria, he was studying 

computer science at Damascus University 

and photography was his hobby. As the 

violence escalated around the country, it 

was clear that there was an urgent need 

for Syrian photographers to document 

what was happening in his increasingly 

isolated and dangerous homeland. He 

initially posted his images on social 

media, which attracted the attention of 

news agencies and media clients, resulting 

in an invitation to exhibit in The Children 

of Syria, a touring exhibition curated by 

Leslie Thomas, and finally, this book. 

HOME FIRES 

By Bruce Haley 

Daylight Books, 2021 

144 pages | $50 

Bruce Haley’s photographs in Home 

Fires could have been taken in a 

post-apocalyptic dystopia where 

the land is ravished and life has vanished. 

But they were taken in the agriculturally 

rich San Joaquin Valley, CA during 

the historic drought of 2013-2014. 

For this deeply personal project, Bruce 

Haley, who grew up on a small ranch in 

the valley, turns his camera homeward, 

away from the sites of war and conflict 

that he has covered for more than 20 

years. The resulting haunting, melancholy 

color images play out against the larger 

framework of contentious water politics 

and land use issues. 

The images were shot in the winter, 

which, Haley writes in the introduction, is 

usually “the fallow time,” a time absent 

of crops, workers in the fields, crop 

dusters flying overhead, and chemical 

spraying. The photographs are muted, 

harsh, vacant landscapes that still evoke 

a reckoning of what was once among 

the richest fertile basins on the planet, 

now imprinted with and reflecting the 

degenerative effects of human presence. 

“You are seeing the bare bones of winter 

compounded by the skeletal effects of an 

epic drought, underpinned by memory 

and the ghosts of childhood lost,” Haley 

writes. 

HE THREW THE LAST 

PUNCH TOO HARD 

By Hannah Kozak 

FotoEvidence, 2020 129 pages | $50 

He Threw the Last Punch Too Hard 

is an aftermath book that shows 

us the long-term consequences 

of domestic violence. Hannah Kozak’s 

mother was beaten so badly by the man 

for whom she left her husband and five 

children (when Kozak was nine years 

old) that she suffered permanent brain 

damage and had to be moved into an 

assisted living facility at the age of 41 

where she still lives today. It took Kozak, 

an LA-based photographer and former 

stunt woman, 29 years to reconcile with 

her mother because, as an abandoned 

child, she carried overwhelming feelings 

of rage. Those feelings conflicted with 

early, fond memories of her mother as a 

beautiful, vivacious, fiery Guatemalan 

Sophia Loren-type brunette who loved to 

dance the Flamenco. 

To aid the reconciliation, Kozak 

photographed her mother’s daily life 

in the nursing home. “In the process, I 

grew to love my mother and discover 

the power of forgiveness,” she says. The 

photographs tell the story of her mother’s 

isolation, loneliness, abuse, struggles and 

will to live, and of Kozak’s compassion, 


forgiveness, and love. “I never planned to 

show these photos when I made them, but 

I’ve learned that by sharing myself and 

my process of healing, that in turn helps 

others on their path to healing,” she says. 

ARCTIC HEROES 

By Ragnar Axelsson 

Kehrer Verlag, 2021 

290 pages | $80 

Arctic Heroes takes a poignant 

look at the fate of the 

Greenlandic sled dog — one of 

the oldest and most courageous dogs 

on Earth. The species is around 9,000 

years old, and has made Greenland its 

home for 4,000 years. These remarkable 

dogs play a crucial role in Inuit 

settlement and survival, but rarely are 

given credit for their contributions. In 

Greenland, where the melting ice sheet 

is irrevocably disrupting the hunters’ 

traditional way of life, the stark reality 

of global warming is an immediate 

and direct threat. The Greenland sled 

dog now faces extinction as hunters are 

forced to adapt to the vanishing world 

around them. 

In more than 150 black and white 

exquisite images, and through hunters’ 

personal stories, Ragnar Axelsson bears 

witness to the animals’ magnificence 

and the integral role they play in the 

hunters’ lives. “The plaintive call of the 

Greenlandic sled dog bears with it an 

unexpected solace that soothes the soul,” 

says Axelsson, who has been photographing 

remote regions of the Arctic for 

more than 40 years. “Its wistful song is 

the story of the greatest heroes the North 

has ever known; heroes who have made 

it possible for mankind to reach both of 

the Earth’s poles. A tenacious creature 

that, at the bleakest point in a raging 

Arctic storm, will bring its hunters home 

safe and sound.” 

VANISHING POINTS 

By Michael Sherwin 

Kehrer, 2021 

172 pages | $60 

In Vanishing Points, photographer 

Michael Sherwin locates and photographs 

significant sites of Indigenous 

American presence, including sacred 

landforms, earthworks, documented 

archaeological sites and contested 

battlegrounds that are now being overlapped 

by elements of modern society. 

His intent was to document and preserve 

these intersections of modern-day developments 

as a reminder of the systematic 

dismantling of rich and complex 

Indigenous cultures. 

His beautiful large format landscape 

images, combined with smaller still life 

photographs of objects collected at the 

sites, reflect on what modern culture 

will leave behind and on “…what the 

archaeological evidence of our civilization 

will reveal about our time on Earth,” 

says Sherwin. 

These photographs operate as literal 

and metaphorical vanishing points. 

They are places in the landscape where 

two lines, or cultures, converge in time. 

This beautiful compilation serves as a 

reminder of the impermanence of even 

mighty societies and of how we share 

the land with places that entire societies 

once lived, worked, and played. It also 

begs the question of if, or perhaps how, 

our own contemporary existence will itself 

fade into the landscape. 

URBAN GYPSIES 

By Paul Wenham-Clarke 

Hoxton Mini Press, 2019 

128 pages | $23 

In 2011, UK based photographer 

and professor, Paul Wenham-Clarke, 

set out to document The Westway, 

3.5 miles of continuous concrete built 

to alleviate congestion for commuters 

into and out of London. He quickly 

abandoned that plan to focus on one 

section, StableWay, a stopping place for 

Travellers since the 19 th century, and still 

today, where the Westway is the roof of 

their home. Wenham-Clarke spent months 

gaining the trust of this notoriously closed 

group, initially photographing everything 

but them. Eventually the community’s 

leaders ultimately agreed that he could 

photograph the Travellers, but only on 

their terms, always asking permission of 

everyone he photographed. 

His resulting portraits are intimate, 

arresting, at times flamboyant, but always 

sleek and well lighted, evidence of 

Wenham-Clarke’s commercial photography 

background. They give us a rare look into 

daily life and formal occasions such as 

christenings, anniversaries and weddings, 

and family events such as dances and 

birthdays. Combined with the text, which 

Wenham-Clarke also wrote, the book documents 

a close-knit community’s fight to save 

their cultural identity amid constant pressure 

to move somewhere else. 


A COMPELLING AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL 

COMMENTARY BY KEITH FLYNN & CHARTER WEEKS 

Both the Great Recession that began 

in 2008 and the more recent global 

pandemic provide the backdrop 

for these remarkable portraits and 

testimonies of the people who do 

their best to survive with the odds 

stacked against them. 

- Glenn Ruga 


Featuring Photographs 

by Charter Weeks and 

Text by Keith Flynn 

Pre-Order your Copy Now 

https://tinyurl.com/RedhawkProsperityGospel 

Joseph Rodriguez 

Continued from page 53. 

CC: With regard to the ongoing conversation 

about minorities and underrepresented 

communities reclaiming ownership 

of the narrative in the media, what do 

you think is the value of having someone 

from inside a community documenting 

it, as opposed to someone from outside? 

How do you see social media affecting 

the process? 

JR: I remember people used to tell me: 

“You’re not gonna make any money 

shooting Black and brown people.” That 

was racist. I had to let it roll off my back 

and say, “Okay, we’ll get there.” 

When National Geographic published 

“Growing up in East Harlem” in May 

1990, it was a cover story, World Press 

Photo-winning, all these awards, 26 

pages. It was the proudest day of my life 

when it was published: I was in Spanish 

Harlem at the library with my magazine, 

and these little chavelitos (young kids) 

were reading it being like “Wow! This is 

my neighborhood!” 

Some time later, several of the editors 

at the magazine told me they felt they 

should not be doing stories about poverty 

in America. And I said to myself: “Wait 

a minute, you mean to tell me I can go to 

Ethiopia and show bare breasted, starving 

women and that’s okay?” After doing 

another story in Africa I chose not to 

work for them. All of a sudden, 10 years 

ago they’re going back and looking at 

many of their stories through a colonialist 

lens, 'cause now it’s the 21st century 

and everybody calls you up on social 

networks. 

Social media has given many people 

a voice. I put a lot of my work there 

because the younger generations don’t 

read, they don’t go to libraries or look at 

books. Social media is giving a platform 

for many of us to see and read. 

There’s one thing I want to make clear 

though: just because I’m Latino, I’m a 

photographer who happens to be Latino, 

I’m not a Latino photographer. That’s not 

how I label myself. 

Ethnicity should not have to do with 

what you represent — although that’s 

shifted, and there’s a lot of Black folks out 

there that are pushing the Black narrative, 

a lot of Latinos pushing the Latino narrative, 

a lot of women pushing the women 

narrative, a lot of trans folks pushing the 

trans narrative. Everybody’s out there trying 

to do something, and that’s okay. But 

it’s very easy to get pigeonholed like in my 

case: “Hire Joe, he’ll shoot AIDS. He’ll do 

drug addicts, dope fiends and gangsters.” 

I don’t look at what color or gender 

you are. I don’t care where you come 

from, what your class status is. If you’re 

putting the time in, if you’re willing to 

listen, you can do good work. I don’t like 

the way the conversations are going right 

now where, “Oh, you’re white, you’re 

not allowed to do this project,” or “You’re 

Black, you’re not allowed to do that 

project.” Photography has always been 

universal, as far as I’m concerned. 



Contributors 

Sofia Aldinio is an Argentine-American 

documentary photographer and storyteller 

based between Joshua Tree, California and 

Baja California, Mexico. As an immigrant 

and Latina, Sofia’s work is guided by themes 

like climate change, preserving natural and 

cultural heritage, and immigration, amplifying 

the stories of immigrants and refugees in the 

Northeast of the United States. 

Barbara Ayotte is the editor of ZEKE magazine 

and the Communications Director of the 

Social Documentary Network. She has served 

as a senior strategic communications strategist, 

writer and activist for leading global health, 

human rights and media nonprofit organizations, 

including the Nobel Peace Prize- winning 

Physicians for Human Rights and International 

Campaign to Ban Landmines. 

Kirsten Rebekah Bethmann, aka Kirsten 

Lewis, is a Colorado-based international 

photographer, educator and public speaker. 

She has traveled to over 40 countries to work 

with organizations and individuals creating 

documentary-based pictures to aid in fundraising, 

advertising, awareness and personal family 

archive builds, and is the primary force in 

the genre of documentary family photography. 

Donald Black Jr. is a Cleveland artist who 

works with video, installation, and photography. 

He is an alumnus of Cleveland School of 

the Arts and attended Ohio University, where 

he studied commercial photography. Black 

received first place in SDN's From Tulsa to 

Minneapolis Call for Entries and third place in 

Nikon's international photo competition. His 

work explores family relationships, racism, 

environment, and identity. 

Beginning as a freelancer for the Washington 

Post, Brian Branch-Price became an intern 

and staffer at various publications. As a content 

provider, Brian contracts with Zuma Press 

and also focuses on portraiture, reportage 

and fine art photography. He had several art 

exhibits at the Plainfield Public Library on his 

legendary Black gospel artists and veterans. 

Sheila Pree Bright is an acclaimed international 

photographic artist who portrays 

large-scale works that combine a wide-ranging 

knowledge of contemporary culture. Known 

for her series, #1960Now, Young Americans, 

Plastic Bodies, and Suburbia, Bright has 

received several nominations and awards. 

Her work is included in numerous private and 

public collections. 

Born in Harlem, New York, Sean Josahi 

Brown draws inspiration from the common 

human experience to capture raw emotion and 

share compelling stories that raise awareness 

of social issues. 


Caterina Clerici is an Italian journalist and 

producer based in New York. She graduated 

from Columbia University’s Journalism School 

and is a grantee of the European Journalism 

Centre for her work in Haiti, Ghana and 

Rwanda. She worked as a photo editor and 

VR producer at TIME, and as an executive 

producer at Blink.la. 

Daniela Cohen is a non-fiction writer of South 

African origin currently based in Vancouver, 

Canada. Her work has been published in New 

Canadian Media, Canadian Immigrant, The 

Source Newspaper, and is upcoming in Living 

Hyphen. Daniela’s work focuses on themes of 

displacement and belonging, justice, equity, 

diversity and inclusion. 

Lisa DuBois is an ethnographic photojournalist 

and curator with insatiable curiosity, who 

raises public cultural awareness through work 

focusing on subcultures within mainstream 

society. She has exhibited her work internationally 

and domestically, contributed to major 

news publications and stock agencies, and 

had her work for X Gallery recognized by the 

Guardian and New York Times. 

A Brooklyn-born photographer of a Jamaican 

mother and Saint Lucian father, Imari 

DuSauzay’s images range from portraits of 

people on the street to those of interesting and 

notable people. With a Masters degree in 

Media Arts from Long Island University, Imari 

has worked as an art educator and taught in 

programs for children in urban communities. 

Iyana Esters combines art with her expertise 

in public health, using photography as a lens 

to document the human impact of environmental 

racism, practices, rituals, and sexualities 

related to Black life. An emerging photographer, 

Iyana works primarily in long-form 

photography and documentary. 

Marissa Fiorucci is a freelance photographer 

in Boston, MA. She is former studio 

manager for photographer Mark Ostow and 

worked on projects including portraits of the 

Obama Cabinet for Politico. She specializes 

in corporate portraits and events, but remains 

passionate about documentary. 

Prof. Collette Fournier has been photographing 

for forty years. She is a member of 

Kamoinge, an African-American photography 

collective. As an award winning photographer, 

her specialties are portraiture, documentary 

and nature photography. Fournier is 

writing a personal narrative on her journey 

into photography and lectures on her production 

"Retrospective: Spirit of A People." 

After taking a college course in photography, 

Jonathan French began to teach himself. 

While living in Washington, D.C., he captured 

many historic events. Afterwards, he did international 

travel and events, as well as many 

live concerts. He has taught and has exhibited 

nationally and internationally. He currently 

lives in Panama. 

Cheryle Galloway is a Zimbabwean-born 

photographer based in Maryland. Pre-Covid, 

Cheryle’s work focused on nature, street and 

portraiture. Since February 2020, she has 

focused primarily on telling more personal stories, 

exploring issues of identity, gender and 

race. Her project “Out of Many?” asks the 

question, how does America heal to become 

one nation? 

Terrell Halsey is an artist based in 

Philadelphia, PA. He seeks to create visual 

poems of humanity while diving further into 

his understanding of the world. After receiving 

his Temple University BFA, he has exhibited 

nationally and also been featured in publications. 

His current project focuses on the 

contemporary Black experience. 

Titus Brooks Heagins is a documentary photographer 

and educator adept at capturing the 

full emotional and cultural spectrum of diverse 

communities. Based in Durham, NC, he has traveled 

extensively to produce a diverse body of 

work exhibited in many private and public collections, 

and taught photography and art history 

courses at numerous colleges and universities. 

LeRoy W. Henderson’s 40-year career 

as a photographer includes photojournalism, 

corporate events, public relations, aerial, 

theatrical and advertising assignments. His 

photographs have appeared in books and 

films, including Ken Burns’ Jazz. His extensive 

exhibitions include selection for the Virginia 

Museum of Fine Arts and National Museum 

of African American History and Culture’s 

permanent collections. 

Kay Hickman is a New York City-based 

documentary photographer. With an inquisitive 

eye, she offers a unique and empathetic perspective 

into the everyday lives of the people 

she photographs. Her work largely focuses on 

documenting the human experience as it relates 

to identity, human rights and health issues. 

Shoun Hill is an African-American veteran 

photojournalist and photo editor based in 

New York City with a body of work spanning 

different cultural, professional and human 

interest areas. A documentarian for the African 

American community, he is committed to documenting 

the African American experience as it 

unfolds in rapidly changing times. 

Raymond W. Holman, Jr. is a documentary/corporate 

photographer who aims to 

create images that touch the human heart. His

clients include Politico, Washington Post, New 

York Times, PECO and Philadelphia Health 

Department. He creates long-term projects 

about human challenges such as "Portraits of 

Family Caregivers of People with Alzheimer's/ 

dementia" and "Covid-19 in Black America." 

Kevin Bernard Jones was born and raised 

in the community of South Central Los Angeles, 

California. He focuses his camera on the communities 

and places in the world that are less 

traveled. Kevin finds great personal satisfaction 

working with non-governmental organizations 

who support local community initiatives. 

Burroughs Lamar is a Harlem-born 

self-taught documentary photographer who 

acquired his skills from his personal project 

documenting Black American life in Harlem, 

began in 2008. His photographs are in 

the Studio Museum Harlem book, Harlem: 

A Century in Images, and in the Shomburg 

Library permanent collection. 

Misha Maslennikov was born in 1964 in 

the Dobroe settlement, near Moscow, Russia. 

He has been head of the Noga Creative Union 

since 2006, and a member of the Russian 

Photo Union and Russian Geography Society 

since 2010. Last year, he also became an 

independent photographer with the Incubator 

Photo Gallery in Portugal. 

A native Detroiter, Khary Mason has been a 

member of law enforcement for over 20 years. 

After realizing the failure of ageold methods 

of fighting crime intertwined with systems that 

take advantage of vulnerable populations, 

Mason began to use his story and privilege 

to create art that fights for the freedoms of 

humanity. 

Dana Melaver is a writer and artist. Her 

work is rooted in the belief that everything is 

interesting, and often acts as a bridge among 

art, thought, and the sciences. Dana's most 

recent projects include an experimental documentary 

about sustainable aquaculture, and 

an ode to the mischievous qualities of light. 

Thaddeus Miles is Director of Community 

Services at MassHousing and is responsible 

for strengthening families and communities 

in over 500 housing developments across 

Massachusetts. He has had creator and 

leadership roles with many non-profits, is an 

internationally recognized and award-winning 

photographer and animator and is a veteran 

of the United States Air Force. 

Deja Nycole's documentary work highlights 

the beauty, struggles, and power of the African 

Diaspora community. She captures moments 

and writes in an effort to show people’s realities 

while empowering each other to make a 

difference across our global communities. 

Born in Rome, Emiliano Pinnizzotto’s 

signature style is photographic storytelling 

and portraiture in a social vein, exclusively 

using the natural light available. He highlights 

the anthropological and spiritual aspects of 

diverse people and cultures. With numerous 

exhibitions and work published in books by 

Graffiti Publishing House, he has won many 

prizes and gained international recognition. 

Tara Pixley, Ph.D. is a Los Angeles-based 

visual journalist, curator, and professor, whose 

work addresses the intersectionality of race, 

gender, class, and visual rhetoric. Co-Founder 

and Board Member of Authority Collective, 

which aims to establish equity in visual media, 

her work has appeared in the New York 

Times, Wall Street Journal, and NPR, among 

others. 

Joshua Rashaad McFadden is a visual 

artist and assistant professor of photography 

at Rochester Institute of Technology. His work 

explores African American male identity and 

social justice issues such as police brutality. 

Published in numerous magazines, he has 

received multiple awards, and was named 

one of the top emerging talents in the world by 

LensCulture. 

Nicolò Filippo Rosso is a Colombia-based 

Italian documentary photographer, focusing 

on stories of abandoned communities, mass 

migration crises, conflict, and climate change. 

Since 2018, he has spent much time walking 

with migrants along migration routes from 

Venezuela to Colombia, and in 2021 traveled 

to Central America and Mexico to document 

migrants’ crossings into the U.S. 

Emily Schiffer is a photographer and 

mixed media artist interested in the intersection 

between art, community engagement, 

and social change. She is a Co-founder and 

Creative Director of We, Women, the largest 

social impact photography project by women 

and gender-nonconforming artists in the United 

States. 

Ashkan Shabani is a photographer and 

visual storyteller based in Turkey with a focus 

on exploring social questions and human rights, 

especially LGBTQ+ rights in the Middle East. 

Richard Sharum is a documentary and 

editorial photographer based in Texas, who 

focuses on socio-economic and cultural topics. 

His work has been published and collected 

internationally and his first book release, 

Campesino Cuba, debuts in September 2021 

with GOST Books. 

J. Sybylla Smith is a visual activist who utilizes 

the power of photography in exhibit and 

book form to ignite individual and collective 

change. As an independent curator, consultant, 

writer and educator, she illuminates and 

amplifies compelling visual narratives in text 

and image as part of a global conversation. 

Kenechi Unachukwu is a photographer 

based out of Central New Jersey. Formerly 

living in the Midwest, he has captured the 

near daily protests that happened in Madison, 

Wisconsin, over the course of 2020. He aims 

to tell stories that have not been told and ask 

difficult questions through art. 

David Verberckt is an independent documentary 

photographer, focusing on social 

issues affecting people living on the verge of 

existence. David builds a visual narrative aiming 

to raise awareness of these often undertold 

human stories. David is Belgian, currently 

based in Budapest and working worldwide. 

Frank Ward is a retired professor of visual 

art at Holyoke Community College, Holyoke, 

MA. In 2016, Ward received a National 

Endowment for the Humanities grant and a 

Mass Humanities grant for his photography 

of Holyoke, MA. In 2011, he was awarded 

an Artist Fellowship from the Massachusetts 

Cultural Council for his photography in the 

former Soviet Union. 

Reece T. Williams is a New-York-based 

photographer, writer, and audio and video 

producer interested in telling stories about 

culture as expressed through traditions, rituals, 

and art forms. 

Teanna "Tee" Woods Okojie has created 

a special and unique way of integrating 

her love for children and families through 

photography. Her visual focus remains within 

the documentary, humanitarian and non-profit 

fields. She is a Brooks Institute of Photography 

graduate, with work exhibited both domestically 

and internationally. 

Eva Woolridge (she/her) is an awardwinning 

Queer, Black & Chinese conceptual 

portrait photographer, public speaker, and 

social activist based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work 

transcends surface-level labels of people of 

color. A recipient of the Leica Women in Foto 

Award 2019, Woolridge’s work has been 

featured in publications such as Rolling Stone 

and various exhibitions. 

Michael Young is a street and documentary 

photographer fueled by his love of light and 

shadow. Based in the Bronx, New York, his 

work has been featured in The New York 

Times and Digital Photo Magazine and exhibited 

at The Bronx Documentary Center and 

Perspectives curated by Jamel Shabazz and 

Laylah Amatullah Barrayn for Photoville. 



FALL 

THE MAGAZINE OF GLOBAL DOCUMENTARY 

Published by Social Documentary Network 

Donors to the spring/summer campaign 

to support the Visual Literacy Project 

SDN would like to thank the following donors who have 

contributed to our newest program, the Visual Literacy 

Project, providing documentary and personal narrative 

training for underserved students and training teachers in 

visual literacy and media skills. For more information, visit 


To support SDN and all our programs, please visit 

www.socialdocumentary.net/cms/support 

Benefactor 

Houck and KB Medford 

Sustainer 

Bill and Isa Aron 

Liane Brandon 

Supporters 

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Mary Ellen Keough 

Ivy Gordon 

Susan Reynolds 

Bob and Janet Winston 

Visual 

Literacy 

Project 

Donors 

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Lee Cott 

Frank Folwell 

Collette Fournier 

Windsor Green 

David Greenfield 

Linda and Gary Hirsch: In 

honor of Judy and Mark 

Bloomberg’s 50th Wedding 

Anniversary. 

Julie McCarthy 

John Rae 

David Spink 

Benita VanWinkle 

Dawn Watson 

A project of 

2021 Vol. 7/No. 2 

$15 US 

ZEKE is published by Social Documentary Network (SDN), an 

organization promoting visual storytelling about global themes. 

Started as a website in 2008, today SDN works with thousands 

of photographers around the world to tell important stories 

through the visual medium of photography and multimedia. 

Since 2008, SDN has featured more than 3,500 exhibits on its 

website and has had gallery exhibitions in major cities around 

the world. All the work featured in ZEKE first appeared on the 

SDN website, www.socialdocumentary.net. 


Executive Editor: Glenn Ruga 

Editor: Barbara Ayotte 

Book Review Editor: Michelle 

Bogre 

Reportage International, 

Inc. Board of Directors 

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Barbara Ayotte, Secretary 

SDN and ZEKE magazine 

are projects of Reportage 

International, Inc., a nonprofit 

organization founded in 2020. 

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ZEKE does not accept unsolicited 

submissions. To be considered for 

publication in ZEKE, submit your 

work to the SDN website either as 

a standard exhibit or a submission 

to a Call for Entries. 

SDN Advisory Committee 

Lori Grinker, New York, NY 

Independent Photographer and 

Educator 

Catherine Karnow, 

San Francisco, CA 

Independent Photographer and 

Educator 

Ed Kashi, Montclair, NJ 

Member of VII photo agency 

Photographer, Filmmaker, 

Educator 

Eric Luden, Cambridge, MA 

Founder/Owner 

Digital Silver Imaging 

Lekgetho Makola, Johanesburg, 

South Africa 

Head, Market Photo Workshop 

Molly Roberts, Washington, DC 

Independent Visual Storyteller and 

Producer 

Jamel Shabazz, New York, NY 

Independent Fine Art, Fashion and 

Documentary Photographer 

Jeffrey D. Smith, New York NY 

Director, Contact Press Images 

Jamey Stillings, Sante Fe, NM 

Independent Photographer 

Steve Walker, Danbury, CT 

Consultant and Educator 

Frank Ward, Williamsburg, MA 

Photographer and Educator 

Providing youth with 

critical tools for literacy, 

learning, and civic engagement. 


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Copyright © 2021 


ISSN 2381-1390 


ABOUT THE COVER 

Emiliano Pinnizzotto 

Giving Voice to the Emptying 

of the Andes 

By Daniela Cohen 

Freezing a moment in time to later 

understand what it means in the trajectory 

of the world, that is the aspiration 

of Emiliano Pinnizzotto. An Italian 

photographer and teacher based in Rome, 

Pinnizzotto seeks out little-known stories 

that represent humanity at a particular 

moment in history. 

Pinnizzotto’s passion for social documentary 

photography with an anthropological 

lens was inspired by his parents, both photographers 

and teachers, and the extensive global 

travels he did with them growing up. 

“The Emptying of the Andes” project was 

born during his first trip to Peru, where he 

participated in an expedition by Italian NGO 

Mato Grosso to bring food and medicine to 

isolated Andean communities. Pinnizzotto 

then became aware of the ongoing mass 

migration to the cities, a “silent” phenomenon 

rarely reported in mainstream media. 

He decided to use his work to give a voice 

to the people affected, both those making the 

journey and those left behind. 

SDNeducatıon 

UPCOMING FALL 2021 CLASSES 

Seven outstanding faculty teaching nine exciting classes 

exploring documentary photography practice 

www.socialdocumentary.net/cms/sdn-education 

For him, the cover photo of this issue 

of ZEKE “marks the point of connection 

between the two worlds, the people who 

remain in the Andes, and those who go in 

search of fortune on the coast.” Vendors 

board this bridge, the bus, selling food and 

water in plastic bags to people making the 

10–12-hour trip. The passengers’ faces reflect 

the “leap in the dark” they are making from 

an isolated life 13,000 feet above sea level 

to cities where they will experience crowds, 

technology, and the ocean for the first time. 

Most migrants go to Chimbote, a port 

city six hours drive from the capital, Lima. 

They settle in Nuevo Chimbote, a slum 

formed to accommodate las invasiones, the 

unstoppable number of foreigners arriving. 

The dream of big city life gives way to a 

different kind of poverty, where migrants live 

in cardboard shacks with no running water 

or gas, marginalized by other inhabitants, 

and surrounded by the threat of violence. 

They are eventually lost to their relatives and 

friends back home. 

Elders in the Andes are in turn left 

completely isolated, staying in huts far from 

one another and without young people to 

help them cultivate the land. Speaking only 

Quechua, the ancient language of the Incas, 

these elders represent an entire culture and tradition 

that may disappear in the next 10 years. 

. 

TELLING STORIES WITH 

INTIMACY 

A Documentary Workshop 

Instructor: Ed Kashi 

Eight Thursdays beginning Sept. 23 

PLANET ON THE BRINK 

Documenting the climate crisis 

Instructor: Michael O. Snyder 

Eight Tuesdays beginning Sept. 28 

PHOTOGRAPHIC HISTORY: 

The Last 100 Years—Culture, 

Ideology and Memory 

Instructor: Michelle Bogre 


RE-MIX, RE-BUILD: 

A New Visual Literacy of Making 

and Reading Images 

Instructor: Sheila Pree Bright 


For Pinnizzotto, part of the power of 

photography is the active engagement of the 

audience, as viewers decide how long to look 

at an image. He uses both “languages of photography” 

— color and black and white — to 

capture the full spectrum of people’s experiences. 

Color brings out the shades of elders’ 

traditional clothing, while black and white 

allows a focus on only the image, without 

distractions. People in Pinnizzotto’s photos are 

not asked to pose, but after earning their trust, 

are photographed in their natural settings. 

Through finding the perfect combination 

of interesting ambient light, good composition 

and informative captions that help 

viewers understand the full story behind the 

images, Pinnizzotto hopes to open people’s 

hearts and shock their conscience. 

AESTHETICS, MEANING, AND 

THE DOCUMENTARY PROJECT 

Instructor: Glenn Ruga 


PRODUCING IMPACTFUL 

PHOTOJOURNALISM 

Instructor: Salwan Georges 

Staff photographer, Washington Post 

Eight Mondays beginning Sept. 27 

RECRUITING ART IN THE 

SERVICE OF REAL LIFE STORIES 

Instructor: Amber Bracken 

Eight Wednesdays beginning Sept. 29 

FUNDED! A workshop on 

how to find funding for your 

documentary project 

Instructor: Michael O. Snyder 

Three Wednesdays beginning Sept. 29 

COPYRIGHT FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS 

Instructor: Michelle Bogre 

Four Thursdays beginning Sept. 30

documentary 

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PUBLISHER OF ZEKE MAGAZINE 

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Concord, MA 01742 

USA 

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Photo by Sheila Pree Bright, “The Carving” from the “Invisible Empire” series, High Museum of Art, on exhibition 11/5/21–2/6/22 

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ZEKE Magazine: Fall 2021

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