ZEKE Magazine: Fall 2020

ZEKEFALL 2020 VOL.6/NO.2 $12 US 

THE MAGAZINE OF GLOBAL DOCUMENTARY 

FEATURED ARTICLES 

LAST WILDEST PLACE 

THE PURÚS-MANU REGION IN SOUTHEASTERN PERU 

Photographs by Jason Houston 

COUSINS 

FOUR BLACK GIRLS—COUSINS—GROWING UP TOGETHER 

Photographs by Kristen Emack 

PANDEMIC IN FOCUS 

Photographs by 34 photographers responding to SDN’s call 

for work related to the global coronavirus pandemic 

BLACK LIVES MATTER 

Photographs by B.D. Colen, Bill Livingston, Matthew Ludak, 

Jean Ross, Keith Harmon Snow 

Published by Social Documentary Network

FALL 2020 VOL.6/NO.2 

$12 US 

Jason Houston from Last Wildest Place 

Kristen Emack from Cousins 

Héctor Adolfo Quintanar Pérez from Night 

Sanitation 

2 | LAST WILDEST PLACE 


CO-WINNER OF 2020 ZEKE AWARD FOR DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY 

Text by Chris Fagan 

14 | COUSINS 

Photographs by Kristen Emack 

CO-WINNER OF 2020 ZEKE AWARD FOR DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY 

24 | PANDEMIC IN FOCUS 

Photographs by 34 photographers responding to SDN’s call for work 

related to the global coronavirus pandemic 

40 | BLACK LIVES MATTER 

Photographs by B.D. Colen, Bill Livingston, Matthew Ludak, Jean Ross, 

Keith Harmon Snow 

36 | What is Documentary? 

by Michelle Bogre 

50 | Book Reviews 

58 | ZEKE Award Honorable 

Mention Winners 

Mohsen Kaboli, Tako Robakidze, Nicoló Filippo Rosso, 

Ricardo Teles, Etinosa Yvonne 

Matthew Ludak from The Fire This Time 

On the Cover 

Photo by Burroughs Lamar from 

Juneteenth Rally, New York City, 

June 19, 2020 

Tako Robakidze from Creeping Borders, Georgia

ZEKE 

THE 

MAGAZINE OF 

GLOBAL DOCUMENTARY 

Published by Social Documentary Network 

Dear ZEKE Readers: 

Just about the time when we completed our last issue of ZEKE this past March, the United 

States—and much of the world—was going into lockdown. Six months later, the worst predictions 

have not happened but a global pandemic has fallen upon the world already killing 

more than 800,000. World economies are in shambles, schools and businesses are closed, 

millions of jobs have been lost—yet the resilient species that we are, we manage to carry on. 

We carry on enough to mobilize one of the largest grassroots protest movements ever 

seen following the death of George Floyd as the summer got under way in late May. Not 

only in the US but across the globe, millions came out to decry systemic racism and police 

brutality. Protests continue across the US while massive popular demonstrations are now 

underway in Belarus against Alexander Lukashenko, Europe’s last dictator. Lebanon is also 

experiencing demonstrations against the political elite following a catastrophic explosion that 

was the result of government negligence, killing 150 people and leaving tens of thousands 

homeless. Wildfires, floods, and other climate-related events continue across the globe. 

Violent crime is surging in major cities in the US, and the US is in the last two months of an 

epic presidential campaign with free and fair elections in question as a result of the virus and 

a president who is doing everything he can to thwart a peaceful turnover of power. 

Nothing today happens in this world without someone taking photos. All of the above 

situations have been captured by people with cameras. Many by amateurs who just happen 

to be in the right place at the right time. But serious photojournalists and documentary 

photographers are committed as ever to using their talents and skills to keep us informed 

about the human consequences of these events—and we are fortunate to see this work 

presented on the SDN website and to publish it in ZEKE. 

In this issue, we are very proud to present a 12-page section of 36 images on Pandemic 

in Focus by photographers from all parts of the world. We also have a ten-page section of 

photos from Black Lives Matter demonstrations and are featuring an extraordinary photo on 

the cover by New York photographer Burroughs Lamar from the Juneteenth celebrations and 

demonstrations this past June. 

The anchor of this issue is the winners of the 2020 ZEKE Award for Documentary 

Photography—Kristen Emack and Jason Houston. Both their projects began long before 

Covid yet each are an important reminder that the complexities and diversity of issues we 

face are much larger than only what is on the front page of the daily newspapers. 

It is with great pleasure that we present this work to our readers with the goal that we 

broadcast our shared humanity and combined efforts to create a sustainable planet for 

future generations. 

Ed Kashi, Barbara Ayotte, and Glenn Ruga at 

Boston Leica Gallery. 

Matthew Lomanno 

Glenn Ruga 

Executive Editor 

Subscribe today and receive the print edition in your mailbox. 

ZEKE FALL 2020/ 1

L A S T 

WILDEST 

P L A C E 


The Purús-Manu region in southeastern Peru is one of the 

most remote, inaccessible, and important areas of the 

Amazon, where still-intact ecosystems provide sustenance 

for settled Indigenous communities and home to 

perhaps the highest concentration of isolated “uncontacted” 

tribes on Earth. While still largely undeveloped, 

this last wildest place is increasingly threatened by many 

deforestation drivers including logging, mining, oil and gas 

development, cattle grazing, coca cultivation, agricultural 

expansion, and both legal and illegal road construction 

projects that open up previously inaccessible forests with 

devastating and irrevocable impacts on the ecosystems and 

all who depend on them. 

Jason Houston was introduced to the region in 2015 as part of 

a team from Science Magazine investigating the possible causes 

for a dramatic increase in contact events between isolated tribes 

and remote villagers. He has since returned a dozen times with 

Upper Amazon Conservancy and other organizations to try 

and better understand the tenuous relationship between isolated 

tribes and settled Indigenous communities and how loggers, 

drug traffickers, illegal mining, and new roads are encroaching 

on protected areas and driving these conflicts. 

Jason has partnered with many organizations including 

The Nature Conservancy, WWF, UNESCO, USAID, and the 

Pulitzer Center on projects ranging from wildland firefighting in 

the American west and maternal healthcare in Haiti and Nepal 

to small-scale fisheries throughout the developing tropics. His 

work has been published editorially and exhibited around 

the world and he is a Senior Fellow at International League 

of Conservation Photographers and a Fellow at Wake Forest 

University’s Center for Energy, Environment, and Sustainability. 

2 / ZEKE FALL 2020

A young boy with temporary 

face tattoos (made using 

botanicals) outside his home in 

Santa Rey, Peru on the Curanja 

River near the limit of the Purús 

Communal Reserve. Remote 

Indigenous communities like 

Santa Rey—and the communal 

reserves set up for their subsistence 

use—serve as buffers for 

more strictly protected areas. 




Linder Miques Viquia, a member of 

the Sepahua Community Vigilance 

Committee, patrolling the upper 

Sepahua River, Atalaya Province, 

Peru where illegal land grab schemes 

are leading to rapid deforestation 

and threatening the people and 

nature of multiple critical protected 

areas. In the past year, new 

deforestation has been showing up 

in satellite imagery along remote 

tributaries in the Urubamba watershed 

in southeastern Peru. These 

small plots, increasing in numbers 

almost daily, are illegal and appear 

to be fronts for growing coca deeper 

in the forests. 


Logs arriving at the sawmills at the 

port in Pucallpa, on the Ucayali 

River in Peru. Pucallpa is well-known 

as one of the centers for trafficking 

illegal lumber out of the Upper 

Amazon. A few weeks before this 

photograph was taken, the local 

paper reported that four million 

board feet of illegal lumber was confiscated 

at eight Pucallpa sawmills. 





A girl at the port in Puerto Esperanza, 

Purús Province, Peru. The larger of the 

remote towns like Puerto Esperanza 

are the bridge between the even more 

remote Indigenous villages and the 

rest of the world. They have mediocre 

healthcare, remedial education, are 

infrequently provisioned, and offer few 

economic opportunities. Some connect 

to the outside world by poor roads, 

others by rivers so long and winding 

that travel on them is measured in days 

or even months, and distances determined 

in ‘turns’ instead of kilometers. 




A family from the valley of the three 

rivers Apurimac, Ene and Mantaro 

(VRAEM) arriving to establish a new 

settlement on the Sepahua River 

where illegal land grab schemes 

are leading to rapid deforestation 

threatening the people and nature 

in multiple critical protected areas. 

Families such as this one are driven 

out of VRAEM—one of the main 

areas for cultivation of coca in 

Peru—as authorities crack down on 

illegal drug production and they are 

now moving into the remote lowland 

jungles. 


Last Wildest 

In Peru, the highest 

concentra- 

headwaters servation areas and Indigenous hidden under the shadows of 

The Amazon 25-million-acre mosaic of con- 

in even more remote places, 

region of southeastern 

Peru of Costa Rica. In addition to centuries-old trees, live one 

lands nearly twice the size the impenetrable canopy of 

tions of isolated 

tribespeople left 

contains some of being the largest protected wilderness 

corridor in the upper of isolated tribespeople left 

of the highest concentrations 

on earth are under 

the most remote 

and least disturbed forests on Amazon and a global hotspot on earth. Shunning contact 

assault by illegal 

earth. Healthy jungle ecosystems 

support a full spectrum of Landscape plays a critical role hunters and gatherers utilize 

for biodiversity, the Purús-Manu with the outside world, these 

loggers, miners, 

drug traffickers, Amazonian flora and fauna, in maintaining the Amazon’s small streams to crisscross the 

including rare and threatened hydrological cycle and as a landscape on their seasonal 

and gas exploration. 

accessible parts of the Amazon ing climate change. 

Unfortunately, these same 

species no longer found in more global carbon sink for mitigat- 

migrations. 

Basin. These include globally Yet perhaps most remarkable 

characteristics that have kept 

is the region’s extraordi- 

this region so utterly wild— 

endangered primates such as 

by Chris Fagan 

the black spider monkey, top nary cultural diversity. Over mainly its size and inaccessibility— 

make it exceedingly 

Photos by 

predators like the reclusive a dozen distinct Indigenous 

giant river otter and jaguar, and tribes each with its own difficult to protect. As Peru and 

Jason Houston 

exceedingly rare species like language, traditions, and Brazil promote extractive industries 

and infrastructure projects 

the 10-foot arapaima, among creation beliefs live in small 

Above: Returning from the river with a large 

catfish in Puerto Breu, Ucayali region, Peru. the world’s largest freshwater villages along the protected throughout the Amazon, Purús- 

This catch, like most such windfall harvests in fish, and canopy emergent trees area boundaries. They survive Manu is threatened by a myriad 

these small tribally-organized communities, will 

be shared widely with the local community. such as mahogany that can live mainly on subsistence activities 

of deforestation drivers. These 

for 350 years. 

like hunting, fishing, tend- 

include logging, gold mining, 

Chris Fagan is the founder and Executive 

The region’s core is protected 

as the Alto Purús and lecting medicinal plants and a cultivation for the drug trade, 

ing small gardens, and col- 

oil and gas development, coca 

Director of Upper Amazon Conservancy and 

has worked on indigenous rights and protected 

areas in southeastern Peru for 18 years. 

Manu national parks, which 

together form a massive 

myriad of other resources from 

the surrounding forest. And 

the expanding agricultural frontier, 

and both illegal and official 


Logs arriving at the sawmills at the port in Pucallpa, on the Ucayali River in Coronel Portillo 

Province, Peru. Pucallpa is well-known as one of the centers for trafficking illegal lumber out of 

the Upper Amazon. 

road projects that are opening 

up previously inaccessible 

forests with irrevocable impacts 

on the ecosystems and both the 

settled and isolated tribes who 

depend on healthy forests for 

survival. 

I met photographer Jason 

Houston in 2015. He was 

part of a team from Science 

Place 

Magazine investigating the 

possible causes for a dramatic 

increase in contact events 

between isolated tribes and 

remote villagers. After decades 

of avoiding the villagers, 

presumedly due to multigenerational 

fear born of a history 

of violence and catastrophic 

disease brought on by contact, 

the tribes were being seen 

with more frequency, venturing 

out of the forest to raid 

village gardens for plantains 

or yucca root and occasionally 

entering unoccupied houses to 

steal machetes, axes and other 

manufactured items. For three 

weeks we traveled in dugout 

canoes visiting with remote villagers 

to better understand the 

tenuous relationship between 

isolated tribes and settled 

Indigenous tribes and how loggers, 

drug traffickers, and new 

roads could be forcing isolated 

tribes into already occupied 

watersheds. 

While the decision to initiate 

contact is likely a combination 

of both external and internal 

factors unique to each tribe, 

there is no denying that the 

amount of undisturbed forest 

is shrinking. One tribe that 

recently came out of the forest 

at a village near the Peru- Brazil 

border told a harrowing story 

of being 

hunted 

down by 

men with 

automatic 

weapons, 

presumedly 

narcos who use the deepest 

parts of Purús-Manu to transport 

cocaine from central Peru to 

clandestine airstrips in Brazil. 

Two other more recent contact 

events near the Alto Purús Park 

were initiated by illegal mahogany 

loggers and evangelical 

missionaries from the U.S. 

Other threats are much 

easier to see. Constructed 

in 2012, the Interoceanic 

Highway was touted as a necessary 

investment in promoting 

trade between Peru and Brazil 

while facilitating economic 

development in Madre de Dios 

region. In 2017, Jason and I 

stood on the still-shiny asphalt 

and counted just a handful of 

vehicles each hour, mostly trucks 

loaded with huge, freshly cut 

logs. Instead of helping local 

people, the road has given 

loggers, landless farmers from 

the Andes, and gold miners 

easy access to some of the most 

biodiverse forests on the planet. 

The area called La Pampa 

epitomized both the environmental 

and social damage 

brought by the road. Formerly a 

sleepy jungle frontier village, it 

was transformed into a bustling 

city of 25,000 with makeshift 

supply stores and disco-brothels 

lining the Highway. The surrounding 

forest quickly became 

a barren wasteland of mining 

pits and the rivers contaminated 

with mercury. 

But in a rather remarkable 

response from a government 

that had ignored the problem 

for years, in March 2019, 

1,200 police officers invaded 

La Pampa to remove the miners 

and dismantle the shanty 

city. So far, it has worked. 

Deforestation rates have fallen 

by 92% along the Interoceanic 

Highway and the forest is 

slowly reclaiming La Pampa. 

It serves as a reminder of the 

critical role that political will 

plays in protecting Purús-Manu, 

and of the equally critical 

need to draw attention to these 

threats and ultimately force the 

government to uphold the law. 

Last year, on the other side 

of the landscape, Jason and 

I accompanied Indigenous 

leaders to document a massive 

invasion by coca farmers 

on their homelands. Nearly 

100 illegal farms had been 

carved out of the forest within 

a few months, orchestrated 

by squatters from the VRAEM, 

Peru’s largest coca producing 

region. Local tribes helplessly 

watched as boats full of 

armed strangers cut down their 

traditional lands, which they 

had peacefully shared with 

isolated tribes for generations. 

When confronted, government 

authorities simply shrugged 

their shoulders, as if we were 

crazy to expect them to resist 

an invasion of armed men 

backed by the coca mafia. We 

are still waiting to see whether 

the government will respond 

as they did in La Pampa, and 

uphold the laws protecting conservation 

areas, isolated tribes, 

and the rights of marginalized 

Indigenous communities. 

COVID-19 has introduced 

a new wave of challenges as 

loggers and squatters take 

advantage of Peru’s quarantine 

to enter restricted areas, 

potentially infecting local tribes 

who are especially vulnerable 

to the virus. In early July, the 

Purús province became the 

last province in Peru to be 

virus-free when six Indigenous 

men who arrived by river from 

Acre, Peru tested positive. The 

Purús River is home to eight 

Indigenous tribes and provides 

access to the heart of Purús- 

Manu and the still-isolated 

tribes who live there. Now 

more than ever is the need to 

educate and advance policies 

to protect what we refer to 

quite simply as the Last Wildest 

Place on earth. 

Leaving for a half-day hunting and gathering trip through an area cleared for subsistence agriculture 

near the remote village of Selva Virgen on the upper Yurúa River, Ucayali Province, Peru. 

Remote Indigenous communities like Selva Virgen are the gateways to more strictly protected 

areas such as the Alto Purús National Park and Murunahua Indigenous Reserve. 


Cousins 

daughter and my nieces’ involvement 

in each other’s lives is both gravitational 

and expected. We all grow up. 

“My The four girls have each other to navigate 

this tender process, and I admire 

their innocent, confident relationships 

to themselves, their world and one another. 

Between them is an intimate and spiritual knowledge 

that is both ordinary and extraordinary, 

and I’m indebted to them for letting me capture 

the brilliance of their communion and kinship. 

“As they have matured, they have begun to 

understand that the lives of Black girls are not 

well-documented, and agree that one added 

intention of this series is to bring forward that 

perspective. My hope is that when they look 

back on this work, they will see the beauty of 

their childhood together, and when they look for 

everyday representations of themselves in the 

world, they will find themselves here, in this work 

we made together, reflected with love.” 

PHOTOS BY KRISTEN EMACK 

Kristen Emack is a photographer and public 

school educator who lives and works in 

Cambridge, Massachusetts and holds a degree 

in Latin American and Caribbean Studies. 

Kristen is a Mass Cultural Council Photography 

Fellow. She is a Critical Mass Top 50 Winner, 

a Michael Reichmann Project Grant recipient, a 

PDN Emerging 30 nominee and has images on 

The Fence for the second time. Her interview in 

Vogue Italia was published in February 2020 

and recently became the 2nd place series winner 

in Lensculture Portraits. Kristen’s work includes 

two ongoing projects that look at childhood, family 

and visibility, and a finished series that looks 

at loss. 

Pictured in the following photos are Kristen’s 

daughter Apple, now 13, and her cousins 

Kayla,17; Layla, 9; and Leyah, 14. 

Taken in an abandoned lot in a 

neighborhood in Cambridge, MA, the 

photographer’s daugher Apple (on left) 

and her cousin Kayla. 




Codman Farm, Lincoln, MA. 

Kayla, Apple and Leyah. 

Photographers’s backyard 

in Cambridge, MA. Leyah 

and Apple 


Chatfield Hollow 

in Killingworth, CT 

on a summer trip to 

photographer’s hometown. 

Leyah and Apple 


Taken in the last days of 

2018 when the girls were 

in 6th grade. Leyah and 

Apple. 


Cambridge, MA, 2019. 

Layla, who was feeling 

ignored by her other sister 

and cousins, turns to her 

oldest sister Kayla for 

comfort. 


Carson Beach in South 

Boston, August 2019. 

Layla and Kayla. 


Taken in January 2020 near 

Assembly Row in Somerville, 

MA. Apple, Leyah, Kayla. 




February 2020, two weeks before 

schools closed and quarantine 

began, putting a pause on the 

series for a few months since we 

lost access to see each other safely. 

Apple and Leyah. 


Pandemic in Focus 

Pandemic in Focus was conceived by SDN 

to provide a snapshot of three months of 

the coronavirus pandemic following the 

global lockdown that began in mid-March. 

We were naïve and optimistic enough to 

believe that by now the curve would be 

flattened. Instead, the pandemic is now just one 

more challenge to add to the intractable problems 

of life in an interconnected world—climate change, 

economic and health disparities, racism, ecological 

decay, hunger… 

On these 12 pages, we present the work of 34 

photographers among the more than 100 who submitted 

to this project. By necessity, many are essays 

on life at home with children and family. Many 

are of streets that only days earlier were packed 

with people, cars, buses, trucks and now sit empty. 

And masks, masks, masks, of all kinds, shapes, 

colors, and materials. Early on we were instructed 

by “authorities” that the public would not benefit 

by them. But of all the wisdom of modern science, 

masks have become the one lasting and effective 

weapon against the spread of this deadly and 

infectious virus until a vaccination is at hand. 

If anything, these pages demonstrate how 

photographers are driven to tell stories. No longer 

able to choose where or what, it is just a question 

of how to capture this moment in global history 

defined by our need to keep apart. 

But who would have known that the murder 

of one Black man, George Floyd, would overstep 

the virus, driving millions to the streets the world 

over, with or without masks, to demonstrate for a 

greater good—a world free of racism and an end 

of wanton police brutality. Many of the photographers 

presented in Pandemic in Focus went on to 

photograph Black Lives Matter rallies (see pages 

40-49) but now as the fall approaches, we sit at 

home anxiously waiting for a day when the world 

is free of this insidious novel coronavirus and we 

can go back to work, school, play, theatre, sports, 

museums, to the things that brought meaning to 

our lives prior to March 2020. 

Above 

Photographer: Nazmul Hassan Shanji 

Exhibit Title: Caregivers & Slum 

Mothers in COVID-19 

Location: Korail Slum, Dhaka, 

Bangladesh 

Date: April 21, 2020 

Right 

Photographer: Hamilton William 

Dos Santos 

Exhibit Title: London in Lockdown 

Location: London, UK 

Date: March 21, 2020 



Top Left 

Photographer: David Greenfield 

Exhibit Title: Moody Street Mood 

Location: Waltham, MA, USA 


Lower Left 

Photographer: Maurizio Gjivovich 

Exhibit Title: The Sweet Quarantine 

Through Their Eyes 

Location: Italy 


Lower Right 

Photographer: Takashi Aoyama 

Exhibit Title: State of Emergency 

Location: Tokyo, Japan 




Above 

Photographer: Negar Agha Ali Tari 

Exhibit Title: Corona-Stricken New Year 

Location: Iran 


Right 

Photographer: Paolo Patrizi 

Exhibit Title: SARS-CoV-2 

Location: Rome, Italy 


Lower Right 

Photographer: Sara Bennett 

Exhibit Title: Portraits at Six Feet 

Location: Brooklyn, NY, USA 

Date: May 6, 2020 


Left 

Photographer: Thomas Hengge 

Exhibit Title: The Vanishing Subways 

Location: New York, USA 


Above 

Photographer: Amlan Biswas 

Exhibit Title: Life at Lockdown in Kolkata 

Location: West Bengal, India 


Lower Left 

Photographer: Melinda Reyes 

Exhibit Title: Inside the Walls: 

An intimate look at the elderly during 

COVID-19 

Location: Boston, MA, USA 




Above 

Photographer: Sandor Agyagasi 

Exhibit Title: 20 m2, 30 Days 

Location: Budapest, Hungary 


Right 

Photographer: Giacomo d’Orlando 

Exhibit Title: The Echo of Silence 

Location: Nepal 


Lower Right 

Photographer: Edward Boches 

Exhibit Title: Somewhere Along the 

Curve — Boston During the Pandemic 




Above 

Photographer: Silvia Dona 

Exhibit Title: Love Letter in the Time 

of Coronavirus 

Location: Bangkok, Thailand 


Left 

Photographer: Joe Pansa 

Exhibit Title: Quarantine 2020 

Location: Mola di Bari, Italy 


Lower 

Photographer: Ventiko 

Exhibit Title: From the Outside Looking in 





Right 

Photographer: Muhammad Sazzadul-Alam 

Exhibit Title: COVID-19 and Human Life 

Location: Bangladesh 


Below 

Photographer: Kathleen Dreier 

Exhibit Title: Tucson Frontline Workers 

Location: Arizona, USA 


Right 

Photographer: Robin Z. Boger 

Exhibit Title: How Lonely the City Stands 




Above 

Photographer: Héctor Adolfo Quintanar Pérez 

Exhibit Title: Diversity Against COVID-19 

Location: Veracruz, Mexico 


Left 

Photographer: Alison Wright 

Exhibit Title: New York City in the Time of 

Coronavirus: Life Interrupted 



Lower Left 

Photographer: Prashanta Hridoy 

Exhibit Title: Unhealthy Mask (COVID-19) 

Location: Bangladesh 





Top 

Photographer: Brian Rose 

Exhibit Title: Williamsburg, Brooklyn: In 

Time of Plague 



Right 

Photographer: Matthew Ludak 

Exhibit Title: Pandemic Portraits 

Location: USA 

Date: June 10, 2020 

Lower Right 

Photographer: Héctor Adolfo 

Quintanar Pérez 

Exhibit Title: Night Sanitation 

Location: Veracruz, Mexico 



Above 

Photographer: Annick Donkers 

Exhibit Title: Pandemia 

Location: Mexico 


Left 

Photographer: Thomas Turney 

Exhibit Title: Senior Porch Project 

Location: Edwardsville, IL, USA 


Center 

Photographer: Colin Dutton 

Exhibit Title: Threshold 

Location: Conegliano, Italy 

Date: May 2020 

Above 

Photographer: Steve Edson 

Exhibit Title: Closed Until Further Notice: 

Boston during the coronavirus pandemic 

Location: Boston, USA 




Top 

Photographer: Anna Dave 

Exhibit Title: Intimate Distancing 



Center 

Photographer: Margarita 

Mavromichalis 

Exhibit Title: As Time Stood Still 

Location: United Kingdom 


Bottom 

Photographer: Geoff Green 

Exhibit Title: Open 




Top 

Photographer: Alberto Mesirca 

Exhibit Title: First Line of Defense 

Location: Kigali, Rwanda 


Center 

Photographer: Lou Jones 

Exhibit Title: COVID-19 

Location: Exeter, NH 


Bottom 

Photographer: Salym Fayad 

Exhibit Title: Cape Town Lockdown. A 

pandemic hits the most unequal society 

Location: South Africa 



By Michelle Bogre 

Although critics and 

naysayers have written 

its obituary many 

times, documentary 

photography in the 21st 

century is not dead. It is 

transforming into something that is far 

richer and more robust than ever, in part 

because it is not a monolithic practice. 

So what is documentary today? 

Defining documentary photography is 

rather like trying to define poetry: it is 

slippery, complex, nuanced, ever shape 

shifting. For the purposes of this essay, 

my definition begins with the idea of 

“documentation;” onto which we layer 

the notion that the documentary image 

is not constructed although it may be 

slightly staged or directed; that it can be 

poetic; that it bears a degree of witness 

and provides some evidence; that it seeks 

truth and touches on reality; it involves 

storytelling; it is often intensely personal; 

it is democratic; and the photographer’s 

intent is the substrate upon which the 

image is constructed. 

This definition enlarges the documentary 

tent without discarding past 

practices. To thrive in the 21st century, 

documentary must include traditional 

reportage, long-form projects, and linear 

narratives, but it also must embrace 

more conceptual and creative practices 

such as non-linear narratives, multiple 

exposure portraiture, multimedia, virtual 

reality, and new visual image practices 

that will emerge as technologies 

develop. New technology has always 

challenged old perspectives, expanding 

the possibilities of what can be photographed. 

Some in the profession will 

reject the expansiveness of my definition, 

but just as we accept that written 

language changes, we must accept 

that visual language also changes. We 

This excerpt was adapted with permission from 

Documentary Photography Reconsidered: History, 

Theory and Practice, published by Routledge, an 

imprint of Taylor and Francis. 

WHAT IS 

shouldn’t resist new ways of telling a 

story. 

Documentary faces challenges in the 

digital age, for sure. Critics ask what 

role can documentary have when its link 

to truth has been fractured by digital 

technology which has left the image 

to float, not fixed in time and space? 

Documentary photography, which has 

been the basis for our collective historical 

memory, derived its power because 

it provided indexical evidence. The 

film negative provided “proof” of the 

moment because it had materiality. 

Once fixed, the negative was indelible. 

Digital photography lacks materiality. It 

is recorded as millions of malleable pixels 

on a sensor. It is non-linear, bits and 

bytes, unmoored from time and space, 

Bud Fields and His Family at Home, Walker 

Evans © 1935-1936 

This image by Walker Evans shows the Fields family 

dressed in tattered and dirty clothes, most not wearing 

shoes, in a one-room shack they shared, comporting 

with the common notion of what sharecroppers 

should look like. Today we would challenge the 

narrative that Agee and Evans created in their book, 

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, and question why 

the photographer chose to photograph the family in 

this manner. 

ephemeral and fluid. Because pixels 

can be altered seamlessly and almost 

without detection, the digital negative 

remains proof of nothing, not even what 

was seemingly in front of the camera. 

The question shouldn’t be whether we 

can still trust documentary photographs, 

but why we ever believed them. How 


DOCUMENTARY? 

The question shouldn’t be 

whether we can still trust documentary 

photographs, but why 

we ever believed them. 

did a medium that abstracted the visible 

world by stripping it of color and reducing 

3-dimensional reality into a 2-dimensional 

narrowly chosen single rectangular 

or square frame ever become associated 

with truth and objectivity? Truth is polyhedric. 

So what truth – observed, created, 

moral, material or emotional –should be 

conferred on a photograph? Or why was 

truth ever forced on a photograph, which 

can never be neutral or objective? 

Every documentary photograph 

results from layers of human agency. It 

is a declaration by the photographer 

for sure, of some piece of the truth, but 

that truth is chosen by the photographer 

through her selection of camera, 

lens, subject, moment, and frame. So 

if we understand that the documentary 

photograph was never the truth, if we 

shed the yoke of “truth”, then the degree 

of malleability of the digital image is 

less important and we can understand 

that even in the digital age documentary 

photographs can provide evidence. 

Today the default has shifted from the 

documentary photograph as truth and 

the photographer truthful, to the photograph 

might be a lie and the photographer 

a liar, so we should focus more on 

trusting the photographer than trusting 

the photograph. 

On Abortion and Contraception, © 2016 

Laia Abril 

This image, a selection from the chapter, “On 

Abortion”, from Abril’s multi chapter project, A History 

of Misogyny, represents the new approach to 

documentary photography: a factually based visual 

narrative of a complex social issue, blending art 

and documentation; thorough research; color and 

black and white images, and a mix of portraits, some 

constructed images and still life images, such as this 

one of old gynecological medical devices. 

Documentary photographers are still 

witnesses, but we need to accept that 

this implies a point of view or a degree 

of subjectivity. All witnesses will relay a 

different version of what they witnessed, 

just as photographers will make different 

photographs of the same scene. The 

photograph as a representation will 


Selection from the series Sugar Cane and 

Kidney Disease, © 2014 Ed Kashi/VII 

This image of the wake for Jorge Martin Bonilla, 29, 

who worked in the sugar cane fields for five years 

before contracting and dying from CKDu (Chronic 

Kidney Disease of Unknown origin)in Chichigalpa, 

Nicaragua on April 30, 2014, represents the best of 

long-form documentary photography that tells complex 

human stories with socio-political undertones. It 

began in 2013 on a short assignment in Nicaragua, 

but Kashi became passionate about the issue, and returned 

several times to create this provocative series. 

38 / ZEKE FALL 2020 

always involve a mediation and transformation. 

To document and witness 

is not just to faithfully render facts, but 

to seek out the underlying story, not to 

tell the truth, but one of many truths as 

honestly and sensitively as possible. 

Truthful representation of reality 

matters even more in work of underrepresented 

communities. Photographs 

can amplify the voice of those who have 

been silenced. They provide a layer of 

historical record because photographs 

are inherently historical; they capture 

a specific and fleeting moment of time. 

We must not shed all connections to the 

idea that the documentary photograph 

is “true” because to do that strips the 

photograph of its power and its value. 

We must be able to trust the authenticity 

of atrocity photographs, images of 

genocide or conflict, or the cell phone 

images from Abu Ghraib, or the image 

of Derek Chauvin with his knee on 

George Floyd’s neck, because these 

kinds of images keep us pointed to 

our collective moral true north, pointed 

towards what we must never allow to 

occur again. 

So let’s not worry so much about 

how malleable digital images are. The 

more important issues for documentary 

photography, I think, swirl around 

ethics and literacy. We live in a world 

where we aren’t sure what a photograph 

is. We are rightly reconsidering 

the historical impact of documentary 

photography, and how we should read 

images in a post-colonial world. Or 

maybe, as we say, that the victor writes 

the history we can say that the person 

who makes the photograph writes the 

visual narrative, which can marginalize, 

glorify, objectify, or treat the persons 

being photographed dispassionately. 

The documentary photographer yields a 

power of social construction over who 

or that which is represented and how it 

is represented. 

Current events call that power into 

question as we ponder representation 

Today the default has shifted 

from the documentary 

photograph as truth and the 

photographer truthful, to the 

photograph might be a lie and 

the photographer a liar, so we 

should focus more on trusting the 

photographer or publisher than 

trusting the photograph. 

and gaze. For sure early documentary 

photographs taken (mostly) by affluent 

(photography was expensive) white men 

in African and Asian countries are problematic. 

They seemingly lack concern 

for the reaction of people being photographed. 

The photographers exoticized 

cultures without a thought that what 

was exotic to them was daily life for the 

people being photographed. 

But “gaze” is not a simple concept. 

It is implicated by formal, historical, 

ideological, social and cultural layers. 

Photography is always culturally coded 

both by who takes the photograph and 

who looks at it. While the profession 

has a lot to answer for – even in 2020 it 

remains quite white and male – a reflexive 

response to create taxonomies that 

define who is “allowed” to photograph


Gypsy Girls, selection from Westway, 

© Paul Wenham-Clarke 

This staged and well lighted portrait of Gypsy girls 

is an example of how contemporary documentary 

photographers blend techniques honed by years 

of commercial photography with a collaborative 

approach to storytelling that eventually gained him 

access to the closed micro-community of Gypsies living 

alongside the A4, a major elevated highway that 

leads to central London. The state wants to assimilate 

the community into the mainstream population. 

Wenham-Clarke’s portraits preserve a moment in time 

that might disappear forever. 

whom is equally troubling. 

We shouldn’t forget great moments of 

social justice advanced by great photography. 

Danny Lyons’ collaboration 

with playwright Lorraine Hansberry for 

the project, The Movement, published 

as a book in 1964, was commissioned 

by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating 

Committee (SNCC). It is maybe the first 

book of civil rights photography, and 

a testament to the belief that civil rights 

activists had, that photographs could 

advance their objective. Lyons’ cover 

image of a frightened screaming young 

Black man being held in what looks 

like a choke hold by a helmeted white 

police officer sears in our memory. Its 

evidentiary nature is a historical record, 

more important now because we are still 

fighting the same fight. Does it matter that 

Lyons was white? 

Ethical concerns today should focus 

more on asking the questions of whose 

gaze, whose witness, whose truth 

is being told? Why we are telling a 

story and whose story are we telling? 

Documentary photographers must be 

conscious of their own biases, but still 

draw on their own experiences to tell 

a story that the person being photographed 

would agree needs to be told. 

© 2012 Sebastiano Tomada 

Even though war photographs have never stopped 

wars, war photographers still may be the penultimate 

witnesses as we see in this image of Free Syrian 

Army fighters attempting to save the life of a civilian 

severely wounded by a Syrian Army sniper along 

one of Aleppo’s front lines. 

But then isn’t that just good documentary 

photography: Looking through our 

lenses with grace? 

Documentary photography can flourish 

even in this postmodern age because 

it still preserves our collective historical 

memory; it still provides some evidence 

and acts as a kind of witness. In this 

world of motion and sound, a still image 

stops time, and in turn forces us to be 

still as we regard it. Rooted in the human 

condition, documentary photography 

humanizes situations that would otherwise 

be abstract. And it does what other 

photographic genres do not do. It connects 

humanity because every documentary 

photograph exists in two spaces, the 

specific moment and circumstances of 

the photograph, and as a metaphor for 

a larger theme. The best documentary 

photograph is neither pure art or mere 

fact. It is both. It evokes memories, elicits 

stories, and stimulates ideas. 


Black Lives Matter 



On May 25, 2020, George Floyd was 

tragically murdered by members of the 

Minneapolis Police Department. With 

a knee placed on his neck for nearly 

nine minutes, cell phone video footage 

captured the last moments of Floyd’s life. 

Unfortunately, Floyd’s name is now added to a 

long list of unwilling martyrs—Black people slain 

by the police. 

As these photographs reveal, his death ushered 

in an unprecedented amount of advocacy 

and activism across the country. Once footage 

was released, millions of Americans took to the 

streets in protest, calling for the arrest and conviction 

of the officers responsible for his death. 

At the time of his death, a perfect storm of discontent 

was brewing in the country, and thankfully, 

photographers were there to capture the 

sentiment. Floyd’s murder was merely the tip of 

the iceberg, the spark that was needed to ignite 

the powder keg of racism in America. 

Older cases like Trayvon Martin, Philando 

Castile, and Sandra Bland still linger in the 

minds of Black Americans as their assailants 

never received punishment. More recent cases, 

like Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, were 

also propelled in the national spotlight around 

the same time of Floyd’s murder. Additionally, 

many individuals were outraged at the lack of 

leadership and urgency related to the outbreak 

of COVID-19; the masks worn by the protesters 

in these photographs highlight both the impact of 

the pandemic as well as the risk individuals were 

willing to take to combat racism. Paired together, 

our nation showcased a view of solidarity eerily 

similar to the Freedom Marches of the 1960s. 

As the photographs on these page attest, people 

from all walks of life joined forces to combat systemic 

racism. As one of the largest movements in 

modern history, #BlackLivesMatter protests were 

observed in all 50 states and at least a dozen 

countries. As cities across the nation mobilized, 

the chant of “I Can’t Breathe” became a rallying 

cry. “Black Lives Matter” became a proud 

proclamation and the nation finally began to 

have candid conversations about racism and 

police reform. 

—Deion Scott Hawkins, PhD 

Assistant Professor of Argumentation & Advocacy 

Emerson College 

Photo by Matthew Ludak 

From “The Fire This Time” 

Asbury Park, New Jersey, June 1, 2020 



Photo by B.D. Colen 

From “#BlackLivesMatter—Even in Canada” 

London, Ontario, Canada 



Photo by Bill Livingston 

From “Protesting Through The Pandemic” 

Brooklyn, NY 

May 29, 2020 





Photo by Jean Ross 

Brooklyn, New York 


From “Life in the 

Time of Covid”


Photo by Keith Harmon Snow 

From “We Have Had Enough! Black Lives 

Matter Western Mass 2020” 

Northampton, MA 




BOOK 

REVIEWS 


#1960 NOW: 

Photographs of Civil Rights 

Activists and Black Lives Matter 

Protests 

By Sheila Pree Bright 

Introduction by Alicia Garza 

Chronicle Books, 2018 

200 pages | $30 

As I write this 

review, the 

civil rights 

icon Congressman 

John Lewis’s horsedrawn 

funeral 

caisson is making 

its way across the 

Edmund Pettus 

bridge in Selma, 

Alabama on its way to Atlanta, Georgia. 

There couldn’t be a more apt time to take 

a closer look at Sheila Pree Bright’s prescient 

#1960 Now. This deeply important 

book documents the close parallels 

between the civil rights movement of the 

1960s and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) 

movement of today. All of the images are 

in black and white, not only in homage 

to traditional documentary style, but 

as a metaphor of the Black and white 

struggles that still exist in America today. 

A photo of Lewis at a protest, deep in 

thought, anchors a two-page center 

spread, linking the past and present. 

I first saw photographs from Bright’s 

powerful #1960 Now work at the Look3 

Festival in Charlottesville, VA in 2016. A 

year later, Charlottesville would be the 

deadly site of a white supremacist rally. 

In response to the horrific murder of 

George Floyd in Minneapolis in May of 

this year, the BLM movement has caused 

a massive reckoning on race in America, 

with thousands of protesters daily in the 

streets calling for police reform and racial 

equality. All in the midst of the deadly 

COVID-19 pandemic that has disproportionately 

claimed Black and brown lives. 

Alicia Garza, a co-founder of BLM, 

writes in an essay, “Bright makes a point 

of highlighting the Black women and 

queer people who were strategists, community 

organizers and visionaries in the 

movement then and now.” The activists 

face the same terror they faced in the 

1960s, but Bright chooses to focus on the 

strengths of the movement not the vulnerabilities. 

Her project of remembering is so 

important now, she says. 

The book opens with large black and 

white portraits of the faces of largely 

unknown leaders of the civil rights 

movement such as Dr. Rosyln Pope of 

the Atlanta Student Movement paired 

with faces of young leaders, many of 

them women, such as Bree Newsome, 

who took down a Confederate flag. In 

a time when protesters of today must 

wear masks to protect from coronavirus, 

seeing the beautiful up-close faces, noses 

and mouths is essential reminder of our 

shared humanity. Theirs are not faces 

of despair or sadness, they are faces of 

dignity, respect, determination, hope and 

not giving up. They are faces of beauty. 

Later in the book, she presents portraits 

of activists with names of those who died 

written on tape covering their mouths, 

visually reminding us of the tragic refrain 

of dozens of victims at the hands of white 

police, “I can’t breathe.” 

Sections follow depicting BLM marches 

and protesters in a succession of cities 

following continued deaths of young 

Black men and women in Ferguson (Mike 

Brown), Baltimore (Freddie Gray), Baton 

Rouge, LA, Atlanta and Philadelphia. 

Bright also documents the ordinary 

backdrops of BLM meetings in Atlanta 

and Detroit, showing the unglamorous but 

essential slog of the activist. 

In her artist statement, she says she is 

“interested in individuals and communities 

often unseen in the world.” Her focus 

is always on the idea that it is the people, 

ordinary people, who are the force. 

In an essay, Keith Miller writes, “Bright is 

on a quest to change the way Black bodies 

are seen, represented and conceptualized…Within 

the current context of momentous 

change that surrounds us, her work 

refreshes our sense of what is possible.” 

The triumphs, the tears, the determination, 

the waiting, the respect for humanity. 

The courage and conviction of a new 

generation of activists, #1960 Now is 

boldly inspirational. 

For Bright, her work has always 

been about the bigger cause. Her tireless 

commitment to documenting the BLM 

movement is a gift to future generations. 

As Lewis famously said, “Speak up, 

speak out. Get in the way, get in good 

trouble! Necessary trouble! And help 

redeem the soul of America.” #1960 

Now does just that. 

—Barbara Ayotte 


VIEWS FROM THE 

RESERVATION: A New 

Edition 

By John Willis with contributions 

from the Lakota people and an 

essay by Kent Nerburn 

George F. Thompson Publishing, 2019 

192 pages | $45.00 

Almost ten years after publishing 

the first edition of his Views from 

the Reservation, award-winning 

photographer John Willis offers this 

expanded new edition. Willis’s pictures, 

along with contributions from Lakota 

Elders, artists and youth, plus non- 

Native writer Kent Nerburn, illustrate the 

dark reality and unencumbered spirit 

that encompass life on the Pine Ridge 

Reservation. The Elders are the keepers 

of Lakota culture. Their texts speak of 

oneness, unconditional love and respect 

for all beings. Poems by ninth through 

twelfth graders address both the pain 

and the beauty in their lives. Nerburn 

writes about the unyielding presence of 

the landscape and its infectious power 

of spirit. He speaks of the heart of the 

people and the cohesion of families living 

in the challenging reservation environment. 

Nerburn also addresses the racism, 

poverty and social injustices faced by the 

Lakota both past and present. 

John Willis’s photographs elucidate 

Lakota life. They are the anchor to the 

writings. Willis’s mostly black and white 

pictures celebrate the land and introduce 

the people. He offers a clear-eyed view 

of the joys of the human heart despite a 

poverty of circumstances. In his Mitakuye 

Oyasin (Opening Prayer) Willis humbly 

states, “I am an outsider, no matter how 

many times I visit. Even as I may sense 

the heartbeat of the Reservation through 

its land and people, I do not presume 

to be able to do more than scratch the 

surface in my photographic work.” Willis 

has photographed at the Pine Ridge 

Reservation for almost 30 years and he 

indeed senses the heartbeat. He has 

revealed wondrous lives transcending 

grim reservation conditions as the government 

continues their efforts to strip the 

Lakota of their birthright. The pictures are 

beautiful; the circumstances are not. This 

book is a wake-up call, for 

those who are unaware of 

or have not considered the 

historic and current issues 

of Indigenous Americans 

and the Oglala Lakota 

Tribe in particular. 

In these photographs, 

the past exists in the 

present. There is barely a 

reference to the passage 

of time. Willis has mostly chosen not to 

date his pictures. He invites us into a 

world beyond time. He shows a deep 

interest in the influence of the landscape 

in shaping the lives and values of traditional 

and contemporary Lakota society. 

The first photograph in the book is of a 

lone house in a landscape that evokes 

the U.S. Farm Security Administration 

photographs from the 1930s. It is filled 

with desolation. The solitude of this 

photograph is followed by a sequence 

of affecting portraits of those Willis met 

on his first visit in 1992. Willis’s documentation 

is fully aware of the pictorial 

exploitation of Indigenous Peoples that 

has preceded him. In 2000, Kevin 

Gover, the Assistant Secretary of Indian 

Affairs in the U.S. Department of the 

Interior and a member of the Pawnee 

Tribe of Oklahoma, officially apologized 

for 175 years of government mistreatment 

of Native Americans. After his list 

of government sanctioned, “destructive 

efforts to annihilate Indian cultures” he 

promises, “Never again will we allow 

unflattering and stereotypical images 

of Indian people to deface the halls 

of government or lead the American 

people to shallow and ignorant beliefs 

about Indians.” Gover’s entire speech is 

included in Views from the 

Reservation. Also included 

are selections from the 

archives of cultural and 

family history from the 

Reddest family and 

Marian and Chubb White 

Mouse. 

An unexpected treasure 

published in Views 

from the Reservation are 

the Ledger Drawings by contemporary 

artist Dwayne Wilcox. He was born and 

raised on the Reservation and illustrates 

his people and their white interlopers 

with affection and humor, painting and 

drawing them on lined paper from the 

century old ledgers that white merchants 

used during their early transactions with 

the original Americans. 

Views from the Reservation is filled 

with spiritual power and insightful 

observations. Many of the photographs 

have accompanying notation which 

supply welcome background material. 

Willis also contributes some excellent 

writing in the Notes on Selected Plates, 

Opening Prayer, Closing Prayer, Artist’s 

Statement, About the Craft, and Coda. 

Plus, he has created a moving compilation 

of tribal music online. Photographer 

Linda Connor sums up the importance 

of Willis’s effort on the book’s back 

jacket, “John Willis’s book looks to 

redefine a special place- the Pine Ridge 

Reservation—and, in doing so, he offers 

a new model for tackling the issues of 

place, community and history.” 

—Frank Ward 


GORDON PARKS: 

The Atmosphere of Crime, 

1957 

Text by Nicole Fleetwood and 

Bryan Stevenson 

Steidl, 2020 

120 pages | 38.00 euros 

My assignment: explore crime across 

America. A journey through hell … The 

year was 1957. I rode with detectives 

through shadowy districts, climbed fire 

escapes, broke through windows and 

doors with them. Brutality was rampant. 

Violent death showed from dawn to 

dawn. 

—Gordon Parks 

The above excerpt by Gordon Parks 

(1912-2006) contextualizes his 

1957 photo essay shot for Life magazine. 

Parks’ emotionally laden images 

portray the 

raw relationship 

between 

the justice 

system and 

urban crime 

in America 

at the end 

of WWII 

across cities 

such as New 

York, Chicago and San Francisco. After 

his death in 2006, the Gordon Parks 

Foundation collected these images, 

related critical essays, and a copy of the 

1957 publication eventually resulting in 

the 2020 publication by Steidl of The 

Atmosphere of Crime, 1957. 

Judging from Life magazine’s racially 

problematic advertising and other biases, 

the magazine clearly addressed itself to 

a white readership. On the other hand, 

the book provides an opportunity to 

interpret the deeper meaning of Parks’ 

1957 photo essay, absent from the 

1957 publication of Life, with essays 

by writers and scholars such as Bryan 

Stevenson, Sarah Hermanson Meister, 

and Nicole R. Fleetwood. Parks’ citation 

above occupies the opening page of the 

book, which lays the foundation to his 

consciousness-shifting images inside. 

Considering rampant anti-Black 

prejudice in the modern world, it is no 

wonder Parks is counted among the few 

accomplished and internationally-known 

African American photojournalists. His 

color images in the book capture the 

brutality of the 1950s amid segregation 

upheld by a partisan justice system. 

Consequently, in the 21st century, The 

Atmosphere of Crime, 1957 becomes a 

stark reminder interrogating the embedded 

institution of racism in America. 

Generally, such violent racial prejudice 

is displayed against those regarded as 

the ‘other’ and in particular the African 

American males. 

It is critical how Parks’ frames convey 

his subjects with empathy, in contrast 

to leading perceptions about how the 

integration of different racial groups in 

American cities leads to delinquency 

and lawlessness. His forceful and sinister 

photographs portray the effects of poverty 

on the urban poor through deviant 

social behaviors leading to lawbreaking. 

Drug abuse, murder, illegal firearms, 

violence, police raids, incarceration and 

steel jail bars. One such photo captures 

what looks like drug peddlers and pimps 

haunting the night streets of the city 

center. Parks’ subjects, particularly the 

law enforcers, look debased by their 

brute force and beastliness. This animality 

can be observed in the profile of an 

officer driving with one hand on the 

steering wheel while holding a two-way 

radio with the other. Most of the images 

are characterized by the combination 

of street lights, red, green and yellow 

neon lights illuminating the hustling and 

bustling dark streets populated by faceless 

individuals. Within this daily survival 

antics of the poor, can one imagine coming 

into contact with the looming shadow 

of a male figure clutching a revolver in 

the murky alleyway as in Crime Suspect 

with Gun? 

Life magazine’s “Crime in the U.S.” 

series includes three horizontal compositions, 

Narcotics Addict. These pictures 

depict the process of preparing a dose 

of what looks like heroin up to when the 

syringe pierces through the user’s flesh. 

Parks capture the first frame showing the 

liquefying of the drug under a flame. A 

needle drawing the lethal liquid occupies 

the second image. Consequently, 

the third composition shows the user in 

the process of injecting himself on the 

median cubital vein of his right hand. 

Parks’ compositions are dominated 

by two acting hands expertly isolated 

from their calm background through the 

manipulation of depth of field. This ploy 

helps to focus the viewer’s attention to the 

pressure borne by the tense veins and 

weather-beaten membrane of the man’s 

right hand as the needle discharges the 

deadly liquid into his vein. 

Parks embodies the new Renaissance 

artist. His practice includes music, poetry, 

film, photography and writing. His birth 

in Kansas corresponded with the spectacle 

of fear-inspiring, racist lynching mobs 

against the Black body. This experience 

of entrenched violence owes much to his 

graphic strategy of counter-narrating the 

American Black story in a searing light, a 

feat which earned him over 40 honorary 

doctorates among his many accolades. 

—Kolodi Senong 


CONVERATIONS ON 

CONFLICT PHOTOGRAPHY 

By Lauren Walsh 

Foreword by Sebastian Junger 

Routledge, 2019 | 376 pages 

$35 paper | $124 Hardback 

Cultural critic, writer and professor 

Lauren Walsh intrepidly enters the 

complex terrain of media literacy 

to deliver a twenty-first century paradigm 

of photojournalism. Conversations 

on Conflict Photography is a compilation 

of diverse vantage points gathered 

by interviews with contemporary 

photographers, newsroom editors and 

humanitarian aid organizations. With 

deft ability Walsh exposes each layer, 

offers variant experiences, intentions 

and strategies while exploring the 

dynamic matrix of the visual documentation 

of current events. 

Conflict is 

defined to include 

physical war 

zones, natural 

disasters, humanitarian 

issues, gender 

disparity and 

political conflict. 

Acknowledged 

is the etiology 

of documentary photography to have 

been cultivated by the dominance of a 

Western, white and male lens, by image 

creators and distributors. Underscored 

by Walsh is the observation of art critic 

Andy Grundberg, “in the post-modern 

moment, photographs are no longer seen 

as transparent windows on the world, 

but as intricate webs spun by culture.” 

Walsh succeeds in proving the collective 

power of photography and highlights our 

individual responsibility to be educated 

consumers of visual media. 

Walsh invites her reader to consider 

the import of visual literacy, the process 

by which we as viewers ‘read’ the 

‘language’ of a photograph. Media 

literacy is our ability to translate the news 

we see, to consider sources and to be 

conscious when consuming content fed 

to us by automated algorithms. In our 

cyber-immersed culture we capture and 

share images in an instant, currently over 

A child soldier with the Mayi-Mayi militia waits as the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP) rebels 

advance. He was recruited while young men in the area were being abducted by the CNDP rebel forces. He didn’t 

want to be forced to fight, so he volunteered with the Mayi-Mayi, in support of the government. Democratic Republic 

of Congo, 2008. © Marcus Bleasdale. 

a trillion a year. Speed and the absence 

of consistent and/or transparent vetting 

processes conflate the form, content and 

context of the imagery we consume. 

Walsh notes a 2017 Stanford University 

study which “showed that a majority of 

middle school, high school and college 

students are, as one roundup of the 

survey proclaimed, ‘functional news illiterates’, 

unable to tell when to trust or question 

a source, and failing to understand 

basics of when and how information may 

be biased.” 

An impetus for Walsh to research 

and write this book was in part driven 

by a student’s dispassionate response 

to a 1993 image of a famine ravaged 

Sudanese boy by James Nachtwey during 

an NYU lecture. The student said, “I 

don’t see why I should care about that 

person. There’s nothing I can do anyway. 

So, why should I be made to feel bad?” 

Viewer response to images of human devastation 

and tragedy have been debated 

extensively throughout the history of the 

medium of photography. How does our 

current globally-networked community, 

one with access to 24/7 news cycles plus 

real-time citizen journalism, respond? 

Is today’s viewer audience anesthetized 

to the suffering of others? Is a 

common reaction one of grief fatigue 

and feelings of powerlessness? News 

Photographer editor, Donald Winslow, 

queried, “Have we as viewers become 

empathically bankrupt?” Walsh opens the 

dialog to ask who constitutes the “we” — 

Americans, Westerners, or our collective 

humanity? 

Photo editors and directors of photography 

have been at the eye of the news 

cycle hurricane attempting to provide 

accuracy and fact-checking in reporting 

while contending with budget cuts and 

loss of staff. The reading audience is 

diminishing, their attention span is shrinking 

and scrolling has replaced taking 

time for thoughtful viewer interaction. A 

goal of humanizing news stories with 

visual narrative is shared by humanitarian 

organizations. As of 2017, a total of 

62,000 non-government organizations 

(NGOs) are working to alleviate unacceptable 

living conditions and human 

rights abuses worldwide. However these 

entities are not bound by the same media 

journalism tenets of neutrality and objectivity 

in representation and reporting. 

Myriad obstacles remain for each 

participant in the international community 

of visual storytellers. Ethically-driven 

purpose informs the innovative collaborations 

being created. The complexities 

and caveats remain too. Walsh arms her 

readers with the tools to be engaged critical 

thinkers and informed global citizens, 

capable of activating our compassion by 

accepting our responsibility. 

—J. Sybylla Smith 


BRIEFLY 

NOTED 

EDITED BY MARISSA FIORUCCI 

BIG HEART: STRONG 

HANDS 

By Anne Helene Gjelstad 

Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2020 

256 pages | $50 

Big Heart, Strong Hands is the story 

of the women on the Estonian 

islands of Kihnu and Manija in 

the Baltic 

Sea. Often 

viewed 

as the last 

matriarchal 

society in 

Europe, 

the older 

women here take care of almost all 

aspects of life on land as their husbands 

travel the seas. 

Photographer Anne Helene Gjelstad 

spent eleven years documenting the 

daily lives and activities of the women 

— their clothing, bedrooms, kitchens and 

farmhouses as well as the surrounding 

landscape in which their lives unfold. 

She interviewed them about their histories, 

struggles and losses as well as their 

thoughts on the future. Through their own 

words, we learn of the development of 

this unique society, the harsh conditions 

they endured over many decades as 

part of the Soviet Union, as well as their 

culture and folk dress customs. 

Gjelstad is a Norwegian award-winning 

photographer and educator whose 

work has been exhibited worldwide. Big 

Heart, Strong Hands is her contribution 

to help preserve the future of this unique 

culture where tradition and identity are 

inevitably slipping away with time. —MF 

OUR VOICES: OUR STREETS 

By Kevin Bubriski 

powerHouse, 2020 

164 pages | $50 

The American street has always been 

the ultimate public venue for political 

and cultural expression. This 

collection of images by Kevin Bubriski 

covers a decade of American street 

protest that began on January 20, 2001 

with the inauguration of George W. 

Bush and ended 

with Occupy 

Wall Street 

in October of 

2011. 

These 

photographs 

chronicle events 

in New York, 

Washington, D.C., and Vermont. The 

gatherings were both large and small, 

and in both cases usually unnoticed by 

the mainstream media. Bubriski’s street 

portraits show a diversity of Americans: 

veterans, families of men and women 

on active duty, families of the victims of 

9/11, parents of U.S. servicemen and 

women killed in the Iraq War, security 

personnel, police, Muslim Americans, 

anti-war activists, disenfranchised minorities, 

and anarchist youth. The common 

denominators that unite these images are 

the lens of the Hasselblad camera and 

the public stage of the American streets. 

Kevin Bubriski has six exhibits on the 

SDN website. —MF 

HABIBI 

By Antonio Faccilongo 

FotoEvidence, 2020 

150 pages | $45 

Habibi, winner of the 2020 

FotoEvidence Book Award, is a 

love story set in one of the longest 

and most complicated contemporary 

conflicts—the 

Israeli-Palestinian 

war. 

Palestinian prisoners’ 

wives have 

turned to sperm 

smuggling in 

order to conceive 

children from their 

husbands who are 

serving long-term sentences in Israeli prisons. 

Approximately 7,000 Palestinians 

are currently detained in these facilities, 

with nearly 1,000 facing sentences of 20 

years or more. 

Conjugal visits are denied and 

Palestinian prisoners can see their 

immediate family members only through a 

glass window. Physical contact is forbidden, 

except for prisoners’ children who 

are less than six years of age, who are 

allowed ten minutes at the end of each 

visit to embrace their fathers. With the 

excuse of giving gifts to their children, 

the prisoners put their sperm into empty 

pen tubes and hide them inside chocolate 

bars. This is the most common method 

among prisoners and the only hope for 

their wives to have new children and 

raise a family. 

In vitro fertilization treatments are 

offered free of charge to these women 

because their husbands are considered 

as living martyrs who have renounced 

their freedom for the homeland.—MF 

SENIOR LOVE TRIANGLE 

By Isadora Kosofsky 

Kehrer, 2019 

264 pages | $50 

Senior Love Triangle documents 

three senior citizens in a romantic 

conflict. Jeanie, age 81, and Adina, 

age 90, share 

William, age 84, 

as a partner and 

companion. In 

his late 70s, Will 

formed a relationship 

with Adina. 

Then, Will moved 

into another retirement 

home where 

he fell in love with Jeanie. Since Will did 

not want to choose between Jeanie and 

Adina, they formed a trio. While pushing 

against sociocultural norms about senior 

citizens, the connection between Jeanie, 

Will and Adina also reveals ageless 

needs, anxieties and contradictions. 

Renowned documentary photographer 

Isadora Kosofsky met Jeanie, Will and 

Adina when she was 17, chronicling 

their moments of adventure, desire and 

loneliness with an empathetic gaze for 

years. 

Senior Love Triangle is a revolutionary 

visual work on intimacy and aging, questioning 

the universal nature of love and 

monogamy. Through photography and 

writing taken from Kosofsky’s notebooks, 

including conversations and reflections, 

Senior Love Triangle is documentary 



storytelling that viscerally immerses us into 

the lives of these three people, making it 

impossible not to reflect on the complex 

nature of our own relationships. 

Isadora Kosofsky was a 2016 SDN 

Call for Entry winner and was featured in 

the Fall 2016 issue of ZEKE for her project 

“Life & Incarceration of a Family.” 

—MF 

DIGNITY: In Honor of the 

the Rights of Indigenous 

Peoples, Updated 2nd 

Edition 

By Dana Gluckstein 

powerHouse, 2020 

144 pages | $45 

In 2010, the first edition of 

DIGNITY, a three-time winner of the 

International Photography Awards, 

contributed to 

the Obama 

administration 

adopting the 

UN Declaration 

on the Rights 

of Indigenous 

Peoples in association 

with Amnesty 

International 

on their 50th anniversary. The UN 

Declaration, whose full text is reproduced 

in DIGNITY, is the most comprehensive 

global statement on the 

measures every government must enact 

to ensure the survival and well-being of 

Indigenous Peoples. It has empowered 

a worldwide movement of Indigenous 

Peoples to assert stewardship of the 

land, air, and water. 

Gluckstein spent three decades in the 

Americas, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific 

creating more than 100 black and white 

portraits of Indigenous Peoples beautifully 

printed in duotones. In the book’s introduction, 

Native American Faithkeeper 

Oren R. Lyons reveals the roots of racism 

in the medieval Catholic Church and its 

Doctrine of Discovery that condemned 

Indigenous Peoples as subhuman and to 

be treated like animals — justification for 

their conquerors to steal their land and 

enslave the inhabitants. 

This 2020 updated edition provides 

urgency and a contemporary focus to 

the worldwide anti-racism movement. It 

includes new images of Native Americans 

and Moroccan Berbers as well as a new 

epilogue from Amnesty International titled 

“Freedom from Violence” calling for the 

United States to take action against rape 

and assault of Native American and 

Alaskan Native women. —MF 

DOCUMENTARY 

PHOTOGRAPHY 

RECONSIDERED: History, 

Theory and Practice 

by Michelle Bogre 

Routledge, 2019 

264 pages | $45.95 

Documentary Photography 

Reconsidered by Michele Bogre 

is an update on where this form 

of photography 

sits in the digital 

and internet age. 

Bogre blends 

critical commentary 

with 

interviews and 

mini assignments 

along with images 

dating back to 

the 1800s. At its core, the book lives 

up to Bogre’s premise that documentary 

photography is now “challenged both by 

our understanding of the true nature of 

photography and the questions raised by 

the every-changing digital environment.” 

The book begins with an historical 

overview of documentary photography 

and a critique of what is “documentary” 

as opposed to photo (or visual) journalism 

or fine art photography. She then 

transitions to more philosophical questions 

of what documentary means to the 

photographer as a witness or the subject 

as the “memory” asking what it means 

when what is captured within the frame 

consciously or subconsciously ignores 

events outside the frame. The concept 

of documentary narrative completes the 

book with novel aspects of storytelling, 

from collaborative, installation, and longform 

as examples of the many paths to 

present the story. 

Aside from the thought-provoking 

narratives, a strength of the book is the 

interviews with leading photographers 

including Ron Haviv, Susan Meiselas, and 

Nina Berman, drawing from the spectrum 

of artists who cover conflicts, social 

issues, and even family. The interviews 

delve into intricate aspects of not just 

creating projects, but minutiae such as 

deciding whether or not to include an 

image that may in some unknown manner 

cause harm or break the trust between 

the photographer and the subject. In one 

example she discusses the impact of the 

internet with Daniella Zalcman who offers 

her perspective that having access to 

Instagram and Facebook has shifted her 

relationship with subjects who previously 

were unlikely to view their images, but 

are now able to access them easily. 

The most compelling sections are 

when Bogre explores the use of modern 

technology as a means of democratizing 

documentary photography. Bogre 

is adept at balancing the critics of many 

sides with the narrative that we focus first 

on the image and second on the means. 

As well, the discussion of digital platforms 

addresses many questions that veteran 

and novice documentary photographers 

grapple with as the ability to broadcast 

images without an editor or editing 

process is now almost immediate. These 

issues need to be discussed to better 

understand how we “reconsider” documentary 

photography in modern times. 

Overall, this book will serve almost 

anyone even slightly interested in learning 

about or working to improve their 

understanding of documentary photography. 

In the end, books are meant 

to generate thought and advance our 

thinking about a subject, Documentary 

Photography Reconsidered does just that 

and challenges the reader without being 

too philosophical. Bogre eloquently summarizes 

the call each of us has as we 

view documentary photography through 

the new digital and internet lens as we 

are “moving from looking at the “other” 

to photographing “us”. 

—Daniel Hoffman 


A Home for Global Documentary 

Lekgetho Makola, John Willis, and Niama Safia Sandy speaking at SDN panel on Representation and Photography. 

SDN & ZEKE Magazine 

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 

3,300 documentary stories from 

all parts of the world. 

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. 

Exhibits: SDN has presented 

exhibitions showcasing the work 

of more than 100 photographers. 

We have presented exhibits in the 

Bronx; Brooklyn; Chicago; Boston; 

Portland, Maine; and Milan. 

Public Programs: SDN has organized 

and participated in panel 

discussions, conferences, portfolio 

reviews, and photography festivals 

in New York, Houston, Berkeley, 

Milan, Boston, Baku, and many 

other cities around the world. 

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. 

Doc Matters Virtual: A new 

place for photographers to meet 

with others involved with or 

interested in documentary photography 

and discuss ongoing or 

completed projects. 

Join! 

www.socialdocumentary.net 

Subscribe! 

www.zekemagazine.com 


THE MAGAZINE 

OF GLOBAL 

DOCUMENTARY 



AWARD WINNERS 

HONORABLE MENTIONS 

2020 ZEKE AWARD FOR 

DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY 

Etinosa Yvonne 

It’s All in My Head, 

Nigeria 

It’s All In My Head is a 

multimedia project that 

explores the coping mechanisms 

of survivors of terrorism 

and violent conflict. The 

project aims to advocate 

for increased and long-term 

access to psychosocial support 

for the survivors which 

in turn will improve their 

mental health. 

A very conceptual and 

creative way to document 

people and a situation. An 

intriguing story from Nigeria, 

and Etinosa has added 

poetry to this project with the 

texts and double exposures. I 

like the aspect of the material 

and texture. 

—Uche Okpa-Iroha, 

Juror 



Mohsen Kaboli 

Surrogate Mother, Iran 

The Surrogacy Act was 

passed in Iran in 2004 as 

a measure to “combat” 

infertility affecting one out 

of every five couples in the 

country. This practice is 

prohibited in several countries 

including Spain and 

England, and is only considered 

legal in others such as 

Germany if it is practiced 

on a volunteer basis. In 

Iran it is considered that in 

addition to solving many 

couples’ fertility problems, it 

also reduces the number of 

divorces. 

With the “uterus replacement” 

system, the mother 

gestates someone else’s 

fetus in her uterus based on 

a previously signed agreement 

to surrender the baby 

to the couple after its birth. 

As a result, for the “surrogate 

mother”, psychological 

trauma is a real threat 

since the baby must be 

surrendered to its “primary 

parents” nine months after 

the transfer of embryo and 

the sensorial connection 

between the two. 

The moments Mohsen 

chose in juxtaposing the 

experience of the surrogate 

mother with the expecting 

couple really conveyed 

the stark difference in their 

experiences, which makes 

this a compelling body of 

work. 

—Alexa Keefe, Juror 

Left: Zahra [the surrogate 

mother] tolerates severe pain 

out of sight of her children 

inside the room. 

Below: Zahra loves her 

children. She still doesn’t know 

how to tell them the story of a 

baby in her belly. 

2020 ZEKE AWARD 

JURORS 

Barbara Ayotte 

Greig Cranna 

Barbara Davidson 

Angelika Hala 

Michael Itkoff 

Alexa Keefe 

Kurt Mutchler 

Uche Okpa-Iroha 

Niama Safia Sandy 

Jeffrey Scales 

Fiona Shields 

Maggie Soladay 


AWARD WINNERS (Continued) 

Tako Robakidze 

Creeping Borders, 

Georgia 

In the 1990s, following the 

collapse of the Soviet Union, 

Russian-backed separatists in 

the Abkhazia and Tskhinvali 

regions of Georgia started a 

war to claim independence. 

Up to 300,000 Georgians 

were displaced. These 

figures have only increased 

since the so-called “Five Day 

War” between Russia and 

Georgia in 2008 and up to 

20% of Georgian territory is 

now under occupation. 

Since 2011, occupational 

forces started a so 

called “borderization” 

process — installation of 

artificial barriers (barbed 

wires, signs, fences etc.) 

along the occupation line. 

As the topic of Russian 

occupation and the shifting 

of so-called borders moves 

deeper and deeper, more 

territories gather behind the 

barbed wire fences, leaving 

the local community without 

land, harvest and even their 

own houses. 

Moreover, kidnapping 

of local residents for 

“illegal border crossings” 

by Russian FSB agents has 

become almost a common 

practice. 

Top: Levan and his son. They 

grow tomatoes for the local 

market. Along the occupation 

line, agriculture is the main 

source of income for families. 

Above: Mari from Achabeti 

village. Her family had to 

flee their homeland, and are 

now living at the Karaleti IDP 

Settlement. 



Nicoló Filippo 

Rosso 

Exodus, Colombia 

At the border with 

Colombia, a continuous flow 

of migrants from Venezuela 

crosses the line every day. 

A political and socio-economic 

crisis in Venezuela, 

from 2016 onwards, led 

to an increasing outflow 

of migrants from the country. 

Venezuelans said they 

were compelled to leave for 

reasons of insecurity and 

violence, lack of access to 

food, medicine, and essential 

services, and loss of 

income due to the political 

situation. 

According to the 

UNHCR, by October 2019 

approximately 4.5 million 

Venezuelans had left 

the country, of which 1.6 

million were in Colombia. 

Others had moved through 

Colombia before going 

on to surrounding countries. 

More than half of 

Venezuelan migrants in 

Colombia lacked regular 

status, and so had no 

access to health, education 

or legal employment. 

Charity organizations and 

NGOs helped supply people 

with medical attention 

and food, but many ended 

up in informal settlements or 

living on the streets. 

Top: A Venezuelan migrant 

accused of theft is arrested by 

police in Maicao, Colombia. 

Bottom: A group of friends 

sits in a truck heading to 

the funeral of a Venezuelan 

migrant who died in Riohacha, 

Colombia. 


AWARD WINNERS (Continued) 

Ricardo Teles 

Every Day is a Saint 

Day, Brazil 

Black slavery lasted 350 

years in Brazil. It was the 

most perverse, long-lasting 

and lucrative business in the 

New World. 

As a result, Africans found 

themselves in a dire situation. 

Banzo, as silent suicide 

was called, and the quilombos, 

fugitive slave communities 

that originated mass 

revolts, were some of the 

alternatives that demonstrate 

the denial of engagement to 

comply with the status quo. 

However, perhaps the 

most common and effective 

form of resistance was Afro- 

Brazilian cults and celebrations. 

Instead of self-destruction, 

they sought to face 

the harshest conditions with 

the disposition to endure. 

The method they used was 

meant to transform the 

self-destructive impulse into 

discourse, thus controlling 

the threats with faith and 

building a new social and 

cultural identity. 

Nowadays, this culture 

influences all races and 

layers of the multifaced 

Brazilian society, although 

it continues to be often persecuted 

by prejudices and 

religious intolerance. 

Top: Boys preparing themselves 

to the Nego Fugido 

feast. This festival mixes dance, 

music and theater across the 

streets of the city and exposes 

the history of a quilombo; 

communities of runaway slaves 

during the colonial period 

in Brazil. Santo Amaro da 

Purificacao, Bahia State 

Bottom: Diptych – Left; A girl 

represents the mystical figure 

of the slave Anastacia, who 

would have been forbidden to 

speak and became a symbol 

of resistance of Black women 

in Brazil. The festivities of the 

13th May 1889, the Abolition 

Day. The Black community of 

Arturos at Contagem, Minas 

Gerais State. Right; Children 

during the Saint Anthony’s 

Feast and the Tereco celebration 

at the Black community of 

Santo Antonio dos Pretos at 

Codo, Maranhao State. 


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FALL 

THE MAGAZINE OF GLOBAL DOCUMENTARY 

Published by Social Documentary Network 

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to the 2019 Campaign for ZEKE. Support from private 

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Photo: FSA fighter by Yusuke Suzuki 


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Subscribe to ZEKE Magazine 

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www.zekemagazine.com/subscribe 

2020 Vol. 6/No. 2 

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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 3,000 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 

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Contributors: Caterina Clerici, 

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Copyright © 2020 

Social Documentary Network 

ISSN 2381-1390 

ZEKE does not accept unsolicited 

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ABOUT THE COVER 

Harlem Native Keeps His 

Eyes on the Prize–Justice! 

The right arm raised towards the blue sky, 

hand clenched in a fist. “No justice, no 

peace!” “Whose streets? Our streets!” 

Looking at the picture, you can almost 

hear the crowd chanting, and yet what you 

see in the frame is not quite the portrait of 

your usual Black Lives Matter protester: light 

blue blazer, white shirt, light blue tie and a 

matching single-use surgical mask – a sign of 

the times. 

The Black man on the cover of this issue 

of ZEKE could be working at a start-up, in 

media, or on Wall Street, but we see him out 

marching in front of City Hall for the first 

ever Juneteenth protest held in New York 

City on June 19. He’s part of a movement that 

refuses to be silenced, even in the middle of 

the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The photographer who took the picture, 

Burroughs Lamar, is no stranger to 

protests. Born and raised in Harlem in the sixties, 

Lamar grew up as an activist, with an early 

initiation during the years of the Vietnam War, 

the women’s rights movement, the gay rights 

SDNeducatıon 

UPCOMING FALL 2020 CLASSES 

Six outstanding faculty teaching nine exciting classes exploring 

documentary photography practive 

Conducted via Zoom video conferencing. 

All classes 6:30 pm - 9:00 pm Eastern Time. 

www.socialdocumentary.net/cms/sdn-education 

movement, and most importantly, the Civil 

Rights Movement, remembering seeing his 

own neighborhood in flames during the riots 

that followed the death of Rev. Dr. Martin 

Luther King, Jr.’s death. 

In 2014, after the murders of Michael 

Brown, Trayvon Martin, and Eric Garner, 

among many others, kicked off the Black Lives 

Matter movement, Lamar took to the streets 

with the same spirit – this time with a camera 

in his hand. 

Never trained professionally as a photojournalist, 

he became a documentary 

photographer out of passion and a desire to 

“photograph something that you know,” as he 

was once told by another photographer as he 

was starting out back in 2007, and what then 

became his mission. 

The next thing he knew, Lamar started a 

project on gentrification in Harlem, to which 

he would devote ten years of his life. Born 

and raised in that community, he was able to 

establish relationships with people who were 

allowing him access into their homes, their 

businesses, into activities and organizations, 

because he was one of them. 

He describes in one word – solidarity 

– the driving force behind his work, which 

often encapsulates the same energy he aims to 

. 

BREAKING AND REMAKING 

The New Photographic Voice 

Instructors: Ruddy Roye and 

Mary Beth Meehan 

Eight Tuesdays beginning Sept. 22 

DOCUMENTARY 

PHOTOJOURNALISM 

Producing Social Justice Stories 

for the Media 

Instructor: Brian Frank 

Eight Wednesdays beginning Oct. 14 

TELLING STORIES THAT MATTER 

Documentary photography as 

a tool for environmental and 

social change 

Instructor: Michael O. Snyder 

Eight Tuesdays beginning Sept. 22 

DSLR FILMMAKING 101 

Visual Storytelling and 

Cinematography 

Instructor: Michael O. Snyder 

Six Thursdays beginning Sept. 17 

Photographer Burroughs Lamar photographing 

Black Lives Matter mural painting in Harlem. 

portray in the subjects or situations he photographs. 

That same feeling that runs through 

the veins of the Black Lives Matter movement, 

which has reached an unprecedented level of 

support among Black and white communities 

alike. “A milestone,” as Lamar sees it, “but now 

the question is: how long will it last?” 

Perhaps a while, frozen in the moment 

that Lamar captured with his camera, as he 

was getting pushed around by the crowd in 

front of City Hall. The moment in which the 

unknown subject of his photograph, who 

would vanish seconds later, was holding the 

hand of what looked like his wife, both standing 

still in the storm. “What do we want?” 

“Justice!” “When do we want it?” “Now!” 

DOCUMENTARY 3.0 

A laboratory for documentary 

photographers to learn 

concepts and develop skills to 

increase audience engagement 

Instructor: Glenn Ruga 

Twelve Wednesdays beginning 

September 23 

GRAPHIC DESIGN PRINCIPLES 

FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS 


Six Mondays beginning Sept. 14 

INDESIGN AND PHOTO BOOK 

DESIGN FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS 


Six Mondays beginning November 2 

LIGHTROOM 101 

Instructor: Kathy Tarantola 

Four Mondays beginning Sept. 21 

LIGHTROOM 201 

Instructor: Kathy Tarantola 

Four Mondays Beginning Oct. 26

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