Tim Harris was the recipient of one of PhotoPhilanthropy’s 2011 student grants. He received the grant to continue documenting life on the Bugtussle Farm on behalf of WOOF-USA. He recently sent us reflections on his experiences.

My experience documenting the lives of the various members of the Smith family at Bugtussle Farm was one that I will never forget. I was fortunate enough to photograph the family off and on for almost four years.

Over the course of the project, I learned how lucky I was to have met people willing to open their lives to me and allow me to share their stories with others. The Smith family taught me about the rewards of hard work, the importance of our connection to the natural world and the significance of family and community. Over the course of my time working on this story, I learned how difficult it is to stay disciplined and keep up momentum in the midst of a long-term project, but also how rewarding it is to produce a final project that is worth the effort.

WOOF-USA, the organization Bugtussle Farm is associated with, is now using my photographs to help broaden their reach, connecting young farmers to quality farms around the country. I am proud to support the organization and help them further their mission.

After completing my project with WOOF-USA I graduated from Western Kentucky University with a BA in Photojournalism and have moved to Louisville, KY to start my own photography venture. I recently finished a short documentary film project about a Bhutanese refugee family starting a new life in America and I plan to continue my work covering the changing agricultural landscape of Kentucky, and how the shift is affecting small communities in my area.

By Nancy Farese

I was certain there was no way that I could eat such a big piece of cake. Nancy presents us with a large fluffy triangle of Bavarian Cream, almost a quarter of the round. Huge. Sitting in her cramped tiny trailer, I promptly eat the whole thing. As she beams I notice that her face is perfectly lit by the lightbox; the single light source is filtered through soft curtains allowing us an exposure of f4 at 1/60^th and 1250 ISO.  Her daughter is the nice foil, sitting off to the side quietly reading, ignoring the chaos of flour, salt and sprinkles. Nancy’s kitchen is a low-saturated green and her apron a vibrant purple; a photographer’s dream composition. She models efficiency and self-reliance as she creates product for Bake my Days, her new baking business.

We are photographers, videographers, sound techs and bloggers on a workshop with Phil Borges and Stirring the Fire. Nancy is a smart woman living in poverty in San Diego, an engaged and capable mother, and an entrepreneur with The Foundation For Women (FFW). FFW is a nonprofit that offers microcredit and support to local women, helping them lift themselves and their families out of poverty.

Phil has composed a team of people with complementary skills who are working and learning together over nine days in San Diego to produce a book and multimedia piece for FFW. I come in as a photographer, comfortable shooting still photographs for nonprofit advocacy pieces, curious to learn more about multimedia production, and daunted by the task of integrating video and audio into my work. Others at the workshop include writers, audio techs, and video editors with the same intention. Phil gives us some lectures, inspires us with his powerful work, then leads us into action.

My team’s story assignment is Nancy, who became a mother at sixteen, saw her husband deported shortly thereafter, and lives in very meager circumstances in suburban Vista, California. We interviewed her looking for body language, articulation and backstory. We think we understand who she is, though as we head into the field – ­­ her trailer park – she begins to defy all our stereotypes.

She is productive and focused, effectively using the $250 initial loan from FFW for baking pans and more cooking classes. Vista is a cohesive and vibrant community where no one locks their doors and the community library is packed with summer reading groups. Nancy’s mother is a successful businesswoman herself. Nancy’s husband is a hard worker and steady partner in raising three impressive young girls. She easily gains our admiration.

We shoot, we post and we record, collecting media piled higher than those Bavarian Cream Cakes.  We debate the merits of Final Cut X vs Premier Pro, the sound quality of the lav on the Sony vs the Canon SLR with a mic, and the tempo and reveal of Nancy’s story, which  Phil is clear must be “cut to the bone.” By the end of the week we seem to have found a thread leading to the needle in the haystack of our media piece that will tell Nancy’s story. This thread will also tell the story of FFW, and hopefully generate more support for women like Nancy.

All of the participants at the workshop are there because we believe that visual media is an effective storytelling tool for community-based organizations, and is important in any effort to drive change at the local or global levels. It is a privilege to learn about multimedia storytelling through Phil’s lens. Over the course of the workshop, through our own lenses we peer into a life that could be our own, and try to capture it in a way that will resonate in the hearts and minds of those who will see our finished video pieces. It has been a privilege to work with and learn from Nancy, an entrepreneur extraordinaire!

All photos by Nancy Farese.

We are looking forward to our exhibition opening at the United Nations in August! If you’re in New York stop by and see the some amazing photography. Information below:

Right Before Your Eyes: Photography Driven By Social Change

An Exhibition Presented by PhotoPhilanthropy at the United Nations

Dates: August 16 – September 10, 2012

Location: Visitors Lobby, United Nations, New York City

Visiting: The exhibition will be free and open to the public daily. For more detailed information about visiting and hours, please visit the “Exhibit” page on the United Nations website: http://visit.un.org.

A single photograph can change the world. One moment captured by a photographer’s lens has the power to shift public policy, spark human rights campaigns, and alter the course of wars. In this era of visual saturation, with images circulating the globe at unprecedented scale and speed, it is more important than ever for mission-driven organizations to create high-impact visual media that fuel awareness and inspire action.

With Right Before Your Eyes, PhotoPhilanthropy pays tribute to the commitment of photographers who are raising awareness for the most pressing social and environmental issues around the world today. On any given day, across the globe photojournalists are serving as witnesses, observers, and agents of change. Each photo included in the exhibition is part of a larger photo-essay, and represents a reflective collaboration between a photographer and a nonprofit organization.

We have an exciting update from one of our 2011 Activist Award finalists! Sharon Hart’s Farm Sanctuary project is now a book! For this project, Sharon traveled to sanctuaries in Virginia, Florida, Maryland, Michigan and New York State to document animals who have been rescued, and now live on the grounds of animal sanctuaries. The book includes the quirky and haunting black and white portraits of the rescued farm animals, with writing by the people who work with the animals in the sanctuaries and essays by several animal sanctuary founders.

Sharon will exhibit the photos from this project and give a talk at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in early 2013. The book, Sanctuary: Portraits of Rescued Farm Animals, will be released in bookstores in the United States in Fall 2012, but it is available on Sharon’s website now.  See the book here. Sharon will donate 10% of all sales to animal sanctuaries.

All images copyright Sharon Lee Hart.

Amelia has lived at United Poultry Concerns since 2007. She loves having visitors and strolls with them through the sanctuary.

Deedee is a feisty, affectionate donkey who was born in 1974 and has lived at Star Gazing Farm for several years.

Penelope was a “downer” (industry term for an animal too sick or injured to stand). She was rescued and serenely roams the pastures at Farm Sanctuary.

Duncan escaped from a live meat market and was found running down a highway in NYC. Duncan now plays and explores the woods at Safe Haven Sanctuary.

Around the world, kids with genetic differences are teased and called names, and made to believe that they are ugly or disabled. Positive Exposure uses photography to combat those harmful and misleading stereotypes and help kids with genetic differences gain a new sense of confidence. After a career as a commercial fashion photographer, Rick Guidotti founded Positive Exposure in 1997. Frustrated by the fashion industry’s narrow definition of beauty, Guidotti set out to redefine it.

Photo by Rick Guidotti

After photographing a girl with Albinism, Guidotti began researching the condition and repeatedly saw photos of Albinism that depicted kids in doctors’ offices as scientific specimens rather than the functioning beautiful people that they are. Guidotti began creating a series of photographic portraits that depict energetic, beautiful, confident kids, living with genetic differences.

Guidotti then decided to partner with NOAH, The National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation to “create something that’s not negative but beautiful, powerful and positive.” Right away he saw the power in showing these kids that they are in fact beautiful, despite what they’ve been told at school. Over the years, Positive Exposure has come up with a formula that it abides by: “Self-acceptance = self-esteem = self-advocacy.”

Positive Exposure uses photography as a way to give kids the tools they need to become self-advocates and to change the way the world sees their difference. Since 1997, Guidotti has expanded his photographic practice beyond kids with Albinism to include different types of genetic differences. He has since traveled the world photographing and sharing stories of children living with genetic differences.

Positive Exposure’s new Pearls Program, which has been featured in the New York Times, spreads awareness about genetic differences to school children. Instead of just giving a fifteen-minute presentation, which would soon be forgotten, Positive Exposure works to link the schools with children living with genetic diseases, installs an exhibition of photographs in the schools, and encourages teachers to incorporate the exhibit into their lessons. The result is an entire school community with a drastically different view of genetic difference and what it means to be beautiful. Each exhibition helps spread awareness and reduce stigma around genetic disorders.

Photo by Rick Guidotti

Through the Pearls Project and Positive Exposure, Guidotti aims to create “an opportunity for people to approach an image and steady their gaze long enough to look through that difference until they find the beauty they are looking for, and it always exists there.”

Watch the inspiring TEDx talk by Rick Guidotti HERE. To learn more, visit the Positive Exposure website at PositiveExposure.org.

When children in the foster care system turn 21, they officially “age out.” That means they’re no longer entitled even to minimum room and board from the foster care system. All of a sudden, they have to fend for themselves.

Nationwide, about 20,000 of the 542,000 children in foster care “age-out” each year. Five percent of them – about 1,100 young adults – are left on their own in the New York City area. Nationally, 1 in 5 youth who age-out will become homeless, and 1 in 4 will become incarcerated within two years of aging-out of the foster care System.

The New York chapter of the national organization, Salaam Garage, is creating stories to raise awareness and inspire action to help youth when they age out of the foster care system. The Salaam Garage Local NYC team of photographers and journalists will create media projects that they will submit for publication in various traditional and non-traditional media outlets.  Additionally, a compilation of  the stories will be published in a book, the proceeds of which will go to the organizations making a difference for youth aging out of foster care.

In order to fund the project, Salaam Garage has launched a Kickstarter Campaign. The Kickstarter campaign has less than two weeks to go, and they need all the support they can get. If you would like to support the project, you can make a simple donation through their Kickstarter page.

Photographic Skills for Little Wonders
A Community Development Initiative
By Rawan Da’as

How it Began
It all started with my visit to a refugee camp in Jordan called Gaza camp – located in Jerash, a city near Amman, Jordan. I saw three kids who were playing with stones. They appeared to be enjoying themselves, regardless of their less-than-ideal surrounding environment in the refugee camp. They inspired me to take their photo, and I later won the Arab Participant prize for that photo. At that moment, I decided that I wanted to start teaching kids in at-risk areas how to take photographs.

I saw great potential in photography as a way to inspire new vision and new ideas. Based on that idea, I came up with a proposal for a program called “Photographic Skills for Little Wonders.” The vision for the program is to meet the needs of the youth development process in the context of the overall community with a focus on developing creative and critical thinking. The key objectives for the program are to develop creative thinking while teaching kids basic photography skills, and to encourage youth to get engaged in their communities.

Intended Outcomes
Observed results in the Youth who have participated in the program include:

• Development of creative thinking
• Increased Curiosity
• Developed communications skills
• Developed time management skills
• Individual youth empowerment

We use photography as a tool to create opportunities for youth in the local community. With our photography workshops, the participants develop their own critical thinking skills and are better able to contribute to community development.

“I learned that I can build my community when I share my knowledge and collaborate with others. Now I am keen to start a new group to spread this knowledge and raise awareness on the importance of art in community development.” Ali Abu Roman, 16

 
About Rawan Da’as
Rawan is a graduate of the University of Jordan, Amman. In 2012, she was an AMENDS delegate at Stanford University (American Middle Eastern Network for Dialogue). Rawan is a member of the Jordanian Photographic Society, and has participated in the Karama Film Festival, organized by the Royal Cultural Center and Human Rights Association of Jordan. She received the Arab Participant Prize, and second prize at the 8th International Photography Festival of Jordan.

See Rawan’s initiative featured on Jordanian TV. Watch the segment here.
See Rawan’s Flickr photostream here.

Social Documentary Workshops to Advance Gender Equality
By Phil Borges

Are you looking for a real world experience in producing multimedia for non-profit organizations?

I’ve spent the last eight years developing media for organizations that work to advance women and girls. Some of these organizations like UN Women and CARE were large and some like Foundation for Women and OneHeart were much smaller, but for the most part they needed help telling their story; from defining their message to finding the most effective avenues to distribute the media created.

Multimedia storytelling can inspire entire movements, bring communities together, raise awareness about gender-based issues and give nonprofits a vital tool to amplify their message.  It’s for these very reasons that Stirring the Fire is announcing our Social Documentary Workshops with an aim to help advance gender equality by enabling women’s organizations to tell their story effectively.

Here’s how it works.  We compile a team of 6 professional or amateur journalists, photographers, filmmakers and media distribution specialists for an 8 to 12 day workshop to create a multimedia piece that tells the nonprofits story in a compelling and cost effective way. This allows us to delve deep into all aspects of production, including collecting the audio and visual assets, editing and distribution of the final product via new and traditional media. In addition it allows us to discuss the specifics of storytelling for nonprofits and how to work with the client to determine the message, target audience and action outcome for the film.

Our next workshop is going to be held July 13^th – July 21^st in San Diego for Foundation for Women, an international microcredit organization.  We will be building the film around 3 women from the refugee community and Barrio of San Diego to highlight FFW’s domestic programs. Filmmaking is a collaborative process and these workshops are intended to provide an environment that allows the media production team to come together with the nonprofits communications staff to create an effective and successfully distributed multimedia piece.

Find more information and apply here (http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/stf_internship) by June 1st.

www.stirringthefire.org

VII (seven) Photo Agency got its name from the number of photojournalists who founded the agency in September 2001. Photographers from VII Photo Agency created VII The Magazine, a web-based publication, as a venue to showcase their most current work, from still images to multimedia to interviews. On May 1, 2012 VII released a new book, Questions Without Answers, by the photographers of VII. The book includes work by eleven photographers, and serves as a visual history of life around the world since the end of the Cold War. The book has a broad selection of photo stories that showcases their commitment to the importance of documenting historic moments through visual storytelling.

With an introduction from the former director at LIFE magazine, David Friend, the book gives us an important look at history from portraits of iconic figures from David Bowie to Barack Obama, to current world issues from the war in Iraq to the impact of AIDS in Asia. You can look at a preview, read a description, and order the book here.

For aspiring documentary photographers and photojournalists, VII is a great resource for seeing a wide range of excellent work from around the globe. Learn more about VII Photo Agency, and see current projects and archives here.

Photo by Tim Harris on behalf of Word Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. Eric Smith plants a turnip into the garden with his hands. The Smith family uses the least amount of machinery possible when working in their garden.

April 22, 2012 is the 42nd Earth Day!

What started out as an environmental teach-in day proposed by Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, has since become an international celebration. The first Earth Day was hard to implement because there was no governing group, and was promoted by a group of students who rallied for people to come together to support environmentally-friendly practices.

The first Earth Day was held on April 22^nd, 1970. It is estimated that approximately 20 million American’s participated in the event that year. “Earth Day worked because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level. We had neither the time nor resources to organize 20 million demonstrators and the thousands of schools and local communities that participated. That was the remarkable thing about Earth Day. It organized itself.”  That first Earth Day in 1970 is considered by many as the beginning of a more organized environmental movement.

To celebrate Earth Day this year, we’ve compiled an assortment of links, projects, photos, and videos that explore various environmental issues around the globe. Enjoy!

1. Watch a great video from the Washington Post, from Earth Day 2010, on the history of Earth Day.

2. Take a look at some great photoessays that document the work of non-profit organizations around the globe who are working tirelessly to promote good environmental practices and raise awareness for the cause.

-See a photoessay by Benjamin Drummond on behalf of the Sustainable Prisons Project HERE.

-See a photoessay by Eli Allan on behalf of Colorado Fourteeners Initiative HERE.

-See a photoessay by Sean Gallagher on behalf of Shanghai Roots & Shoots – The Million Tree Project – Jane Goodall Project HERE.

-See a photoessay by Chris Jordan on behalf of the Nextnow Collaboratory HERE.

3. Watch a multimedia piece, Airsick, by photographer Lucas Olenuik, produced by MediaStorm:

Wondering what can you do in your community to get involved on Earth Day?

Learn how to get involved in your community on EPA’s website.

If you are a photographer, go out and take photos! Images are one of the best ways to share a story and get the word out about a specific cause. If you’d like to get involved in an official Earth Day photography project, see a list of projects HERE.

And course, Earth Day is not the only day we should be thinking about the environment, but it is a great reminder that we should all be thinking about this issue and doing our part 365 days a year.