Tuesday June 12, 2007
Social Documentary Photography: From Concept to Distribution
ASMPNorCal is proud to announce a very special event held at the UC Berkeley School of Journalism on June 12 at 7pm. Social hour begins at 6 pm.
Sponsored by:
LiveBooks
Today, more than ever, images are shaping our understanding of the world and its social issues. Exciting, new means of distribution and publishing have provided imagers with new opportunities to bring to light issues of importance. While highlighting the work of two Bay Area organizations that support Social Documentary Photography, a panel of experts in the field will discuss how today's successful social documentary projects are conceived, funded, produced, published, and distributed in a variety of media.
We will hear about two Bay Area organizations that support the field of Social Documentary Photography in very different ways.
 Fotovision is a Bay Area nonprofit created to support photographers interested in documenting their world. Their mission is to advance documentary photography and storytelling. Fotovision does this through education, dialogue and community. Fotovision strives to inspire and enable positive change by creating a global photographic community that gives voice to the human condition.
www.fiftycrows.org - From the Fifty Crows website: "Images inspire people to act. Examples of socially rousing photography permeate our history: Vietnam, Rwanda, 9-11’s Ground Zero. Unfortunately, mainstream media narratives often work to envelop public perspective on these seminal issues by presenting limited viewpoints and images. Due to that fact that the focus of these media corporations is on creating profits rather than social justice, the many answers that we demand as conscious global citizens become conditional.
FiftyCrows Foundation eschews these media politics and prioritizes social awareness by using arrestingly real, timely photographic images as a catalyst for education, cultural understanding and social action. Founded in October of 2001, FiftyCrows couples visual stories from world-class documentary photographers with action and media campaigns in order to affect change. We leverage our gallery, website, television and various programs and partnerships to unite communities to work together in confronting current social, political, and environmental challenges around the globe."
The Speakers for the Event Include:
Ken Light
Ken Light, a social documentary photographer, is an adjunct professor and director of the Center for Photography in the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. Among his seven books are Coal Hollow, Witness in Our Time: Working Lives of Documentary Photographers, Texas Death Row, and Delta Tim To The Promised Land, With These Hands. He has received two National Endowment for the Arts Photographers Fellowships, the Dorothea Lange Fellowship, and a fellowship from the Erna and Victor Hasselblad Foundation and the Open Society Institute.
Melanie Light
Melanie Light is a writer whose text and oral histories appeared in Coal Hollow (UC Press 2006). She also wrote an essay about the photojournalist, Hansel Mieth, which appeared in 2006 in the catalogue for the exhibition at the Museum of Photographic Art, "Breaking the Frame", and OP ed pieces. She is currently writing and interviewing for a book on California Central Valley. She has received grants from the Rosenberg Foundation and the Opens Society Institute. She is also the founding executive director of fotovision, a nonprofit committed to helping working documentary photographers get the skills and the network they need to produce great, in-depth stories about the world we inhabit.
Andy Patrick
For the past sixteen years, Andy Patrick has been actively involved in the development of social cause organizations striving to make a positive impact on the human condition. He is the founder and executive director of FiftyCrows Foundation, which discovers and disseminates documentary photographic essays that advance our common humanity. He is also the current CEO of LiveBooks, which has developed a web-based application allowing photographers to manage and present their images on the web. Occasionally he finds time to take photographs, sculpt stone and ponder the disappearance of journalism in America.
Newsha Tavakolian - a photo from Women in the Axis of Evil
© Newsha Tavakolian
In the panel, Andy will present some of the work that his foundation has supported. This photograph is by Newsha Tavakolian, one of the photojournalists FiftyCrows has supported. Newsha Tavakolian has been working as a photographer in the Iranian press since she was sixteen years old. In 2002 she started to work internationally covering Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. She feels strongly about women issues in the Middle East, which is one of the main focus points in her work. Her pictures have been published in publications around the world including Time, Newsweek, Stern, The New York Times Magazine and newspaper, Le Figaro, and NRC Handelsblad. In 2005 she was chosen along with nine other women photographers for a special issue of Marie Claire magazine. In 2006 she was selected with 11 other young photographers for the World Press Photo Masterclass in Holland. She is represented by Polaris Images in New York City. A resident of Tehran, she speaks Farsi, English and Kurdish.
© Ken Light - From "Central Valley"
Panelists: Andy Patrick, Ken Light, Melanie Light
Sponsors:
Livebooks
Venue: UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, North Gate Hal
Click here for directions
Date: Tuesday, June 12
7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.
Social hour: 6:00-7:00
Cost:
ASMP members $5
Students $10
General $20
Advance Tickets: through Pay Pal (Please bring printed Pay Pal receipt to the event)
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