The entry fee: building community or breaking trust?

Why are artists asked to contribute to the administration budget of small arts organizations?

Part of me just DETESTS paying application fees for grants, when the whole reason I am applying to things is to INCREASE my net wealth, in order to do my project. I mean, please! It’s just so illogical! And irritating! Sometimes I feel like the people running these competitions and grant programs have no respect for the effort I am putting into funding and doing my work. TANTRUM.

Then, other times, asking for an application fee seems like a perfectly reasonable—and even socially productive—thing to do. I think about Cadre, the art grant started by photographers Carla Williams and Deirdre Visser, which was designed to function as a community of artists supporting each other. It built relationships and a feeling of connection, because you got to be the donor who supports artists, as well as the artist who receives support. The problem they ran into was the time it was taking them to administer the grant (and update the communications around it), so it got put on hold.

Cadre was very distinctive in the way it overtly acknowledged the buy-in it required from artists. I really liked that. I felt empowered, rather than used. But overhead—which Cadre didn’t have at all, which undermined it—is the very thing that most of these application fees provide to the organization.

Small nonprofits, started by other artists, like Amy Elkins’ and Cara Phillips‘  Women In Photography NYC (WIPNYC) for example, don’t have a large enough administration budget to cover the grantmaking process. (And no wonder–I imagine it’s just as hard for them to raise money for the org as it is for me to raise money for my project.) They have enough money for one grant ($3,000), but–I assume–not enough money to pay staff to do all the stuff you need to do to actually give it away. Plus, the grant provides a way for them to build an audience, and build a following, and promote their other projects just as much as it provides a way to support an individual artist’s project.

For many organizations, their grants are a marketing and communications tool in addition to being a grant.  While I recognize that as an effective strategy, it can be frustrating to feel as though I am paying for their marketing.

This is where I’m on the fence. I want to support WIPNYC as an organization because I think they’re great, and my application fee is a way to do that. But I don’t think there’s enough pay-off. They don’t acknowledge my support as a donation to them. They make it a requirement of applying for the grant. And that act, of me giving away money in order to compete to get money, just feels so counter-intuitive (and counterproductive). The more grants of this type that I apply to, the more I run the risk of spending more on application fees than I receive in actual funding.

Hey, Hot Shot!, Critical Mass, and Humble Arts Foundation NY’s Collector’s Guide all have much higher application fees, but fall into a different category for me. They all give me more than just a chance at an award or a grant. Hey, Hot Shot! has an escalating fee (the later you apply to the deadline, the more you pay—good idea from an organizational-logistics perspective!). Right now it’s around $70. And in exchange for it, you get a high probability that they will blog about you, and automatic entry into a sub-competition for smaller awards. They have an impressive marketing machine, so if that machine goes to work on your behalf, that is a significant gain. I’m still ostensibly contributing to their overhead, and it’s still not a sure bet that you receive anything, but there’s a relatively high probability that you will. (One hopes.)

Like Hey, Hot Shot!, PhotoLucida’s Critical Mass promises that powerful eyes will look at your images. And you get a CD of all the entrants’ work. And it promises to send you the books that get created as a result of the competition that you are a part of. Depending on who you are and what you’re doing, that can be worth the $75 entry fee. (Yay, books!) Meanwhile, the Humble Colletor’s Guide has a $40 submission fee, and then a $295 fee if you are accepted, which feels astronomical, but you are basically helping to pay for and distribute your work to gallerists and curators, in an extremely sophisticated format. Again, for some people, it’s the right moment to make that kind of investment. For others, it isn’t–the process encourages self-selection.

With more generic entry fees for grants, there’s a lot less certainty that you’ll get anything at all from entering the competition. Meanwhile, when you are applying to foundations, city or state grants, or other organizations that exist exclusively as grant-making entities, there is usually no application fee at all. The problem with many of those is that it can be hard to find funders for individuals, rather than organizations. And their applications are so complex that it can take more time to complete them than the grants are actually worth, in terms of dollars per hour.

This is an issue I’d really love to hear your thoughts about. Whether you’re an artist, a philanthropist, a nonprofit, someone running these kinds of initiatives, or an innocent bystander, let me know what you think about this. It’s always helpful to hear organizational strategies and user-perspectives.

And by the way, PhotoPhilanthropy has no entry fee at all, and submissions are open.

It's cool to be different.

Mark Tuschman on behalf of Women's Trust

Now that PhotoPhilanthropy’s submissions are open, I find myself thinking again about what an interesting niche we fill in the world of photographic grants and prizes. There are not too many competitions out there that specifically target collaborations between photographers and nonprofit organizations.

In fact, when I first brokered a partnership between myself and a small nonprofit, it felt like a radical act. I had not yet seen many examples of what that looked like or how it could be done. I had worked for a nonprofit before, and taken pictures for them as part of my job, which is another kind of partnership. But I had never courted an organization with the express goal of making art with them.

It was hard to figure out how to go about it.

I started by getting a project idea, and identifying organizations that it would make sense to collaborate with. Then I scheduled meetings with representatives of the organizations, and eventually their CEO’s. In those meetings, I had to convince the organizations that: a) we shared values; b) we shared objectives; and c) there were specific things each of us would gain from working together.

Keri Vaca on behalf of the Homeless Prenatal Program

Writing down those specific benefits for each side of the partnership was a really important part. It helped the organization see me as a separate entity, as another organization with my own goals to accomplish and resources to mobilize, rather than as one of their employees. It also helped me understand their perspective and needs more deeply.

From there, we designed the specifics of the project together. We wrote grant proposals together. We courted venues for exhibitions together. We mobilized our separate networks when we needed volunteers or when we were ready to invite people to the shows.

One of the amazing things about the Activist Awards last year, for me, was seeing how many other people have negotiated this process of collaboration. Some people created simple partnerships, while others created multifaceted, more complex partnerships. But no matter how different their approach, it has been so pleasurable for me to find out that other artists, nonprofits, volunteers, journalists, and students have all seen the value of this kind of work, and have plunged themselves into it. Yee haw!

It’s so great to feel that I am part of this community, and that there are organizations like PhotoPhilanthropy recognizing this challenging and meaningful work, and applauding it.

Rosa Verhoeve on behalf of Medecins sans Frontieres

Who ElSE is in this niche?

Project Exposure, where you can contribute funds to support a photographer/nonprofit collaboration.

Getty Grants for Good offers an annual grant to support a photographer/nonprofit collaboration.

CollectiveLens is another community where you can interact with others and post your photos.

Photographers for Charity is an organization that provides photography and marketing consulting to nonprofits.

Let us know if you’ve heard of others! We want to know who’s out there!

That poor, dead wombat!

What do you get when you add exotic roadkill to your diningroom table? Why, something that looks like a 17^th century European masterwork, of course! I invite you to take a look at the work of Marian Drew, an Australian photographer who blurs the lines between fact and fiction with the utmost care.

Marian Drew: Wombat and Watermelon, 2005 & Wallaby and Tarpaulin, 2006

I find her work very moving. Somehow, her modern photographs dramatically increase my interest in antiquated still life paintings. And they also comment on stillness and motion, reality and imagination, and the tension between the natural and the man-orchestrated worlds.

Marian Drew: Rainbow Lorikeet on Queensland needlework, 2009 & Kingfisher with Chinese cloth and strawberries, 2009

To an American eye, the wildlife itself, which is one of the “real” or documentary aspects of this work, is almost the least believable component of each image. A rainbow lorikeet, for example, hardly looks like your average bird. Although now, living in Australia, I’m getting to know them better.

I found Drew’s work through the recommendation of a friend of mine, named Leigh Merrill. Leigh also plays with our conceptions of reality and fakery in her work. She mixes fabric flowers with real flowers with wall paper. What is “real” here?

Leigh Merrill: Ranunculli

The camera is the equalizer—in a way, the camera makes everything equally real, equally fake.

Leigh Merrill: Blue Cake

And she brings in supermarket cakes, which I have eaten with gusto, but which, now that she mentions it, have very little of the “real” in them. (She had a few in her studio that lasted, unchanged, unspoilt, for weeks. Which was more than a little alarming.)

Leigh Merrill: Arizona

The same thing happens again with images of Phoenix, the Sonoran desert, and the Grand Canyon. Using the tilt/shift capabilities of the view camera, street scenes look like dioramas.

Leigh Merrill: Arizona

Incidentally, if you’re interested in this look, Olivo Barbieri’s photographs of Las Vegas are astounding.

Olivo Barbieri

And this video by Sam O’Hare called The Sandpit—a day in the life of New York City, is also quite wonderful.

And just try to figure out what is real and what is not in this picture:

Leigh Merrill: Pink Street

What I like about all these photographers is that they call our attention to the world around us in a new way. It’s just as the kids from the kNOw said last week—the power of photography is that it can make people think; it makes them see things differently; it makes them reevaluate what they know about their world. And sometimes, an effective way to do that is to surprise people. To play. To take something familiar, and make it strange. Or to take something strange, and make it familiar.

I still think that one of the most arresting photo essays we received last year is from Sumit Dayal, who made composite images about the flooding of the Kosi River, in Bihar, India. He was able to take something strange to me—I have little experience with floods, or India—and make it familiar. He found beauty there, and loneliness, and a sense of how vast and powerful a river can be. Those things transcend individual experience. So he used them to draw me in. And it worked.

Sumit Dayal: Jorgawa, Murilgunj, Madhepura, Bihar. The floodwaters are knee deep in what used to be Mahendra ThakurÕs wheat field just a few weeks ago. The flooding has submerged 100 sqkm hectares of farmland, slightly less than the area of New Delhi.

Kids and cameras: talking with students at "the kNOw"

Last week I got to interview four students from Fresno, CA who are part of “the kNOw” after school program. They produce a literary magazine and learn photography with artist Joseph Smooke. In last week’s post, I introduced the kNOw, and Joseph, so take a look at that if you’d like more background.

I asked Maria Valdez what she likes to write about. “Well, I write poetry. And I write about the system. The CPS[1] system. Because I’ve been in and out of it a lot,” she said. “And I write about my mom. Because she passed away when I was two years old.”

“I tend to want more than I have,” she said. “But I think taking pictures I’ve learned that what I have is enough, you know? When I go around and take pictures, it’s like, ‘Look at everything that I live on and everything that I have!’”

That statement startled me—how true it is! Sometimes, looking is having—that’s why we love pictures so much, because they give us experiences, relationships and objects. They help our imaginations stretch father.

“There are some things that you can’t change with photography,” she told me. “But what you can change is the littering, the trash…everything that you can see. Like graffiti.”

I asked Marcus Vega what impact he sees photography as having on the group of students as a whole. “It’s grabbing everybody,” he told me.

“Like when I come here, I get to escape from my daily life,” Marcus said. “It just cancels out everything. It’s like a whole new environment.

“With photography, it adds on to the tools that I’m equipped with to tell my story and what it is that I see around me. It’s another outlet.”

One of the questions I had for the students was how they thought the program impacts their community as a whole. Each of them told me that the kNOw’s program helps people learn more about what’s happening all around them.

Marcus said, “With the kNOw, basically, what we’re doing is we’re informing the community about what’s going on. Because everyone’s off doing their own thing. And it’s good to see someone else’s side of it. It offers a whole different perspective, a whole different view. Like what people usually ignore–it gives them a chance to sit back and really see it.”

This kind of work also builds relationships. Miguel Martinez described how people will come up to him and say, “You write for the kNOw?!” or “I saw your article!” In a way, it gives people permission to talk to each other, and to talk to each other about difficult and meaningful issues.

Jaleesa Vickers has written some incredibly challenging pieces about her experiences, including essays on self-harm, racism, depression and bisexuality. When I asked her about what kind of reaction she’s gotten to her work, she said, “For the articles that I’ve been writing, because they’ve been so personal, usually it’s been shock. But I kind of like that reaction from people, because it gets them to think.”

She approaches photography with the same mentality. “Just like writing, I like to get people to think. To think about what I’m taking pictures of—usually, my community: what it needs, what has happened to it.”

And the benefit? “I think what we’re doing just gives other people a greater sense of community,” said Jaleesa. “Because they’re so wrapped up in their own lives, what we do helps them know what’s going on around them, if they don’t have the time to see that. I think that’s the major benefit from doing all this.”

There are great images in the world. There are pictures that move you to tears, or to joy, or that seem to lift you up. But community-based-photography recognizes that there is another beautiful aspect to photography—that the process of making pictures builds relationships and makes people happier. You don’t have to be a famous photographer for your pictures to be powerful. And whether it’s used in communities that are strong or communities that are struggling, photography is a remarkable tool for bringing people together.

Says Miguel Martinez, “It’s just a real interesting, fun thing, taking pictures. I really cannot put it into words. When you get one good shot, you’re like, ‘Wow, I’m going to keep going.’”

In case you missed it last week, here is a slideshow of a few of the kNOw’s photos for 2010.

Thank you Jaleesa Vickers, Marcus Vega, Maria Valdez and Miguel Martinez for talking with me!

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[1] Child Protection Services

Hello, Fresno!

Joseph Smooke is a photographer. He documents people and programs working to create change in communities. Last year, he submitted a photo essay to PhotoPhilanthropy.

Joseph Smooke on behalf of FM4 Paso Libre

He also teaches photography to a group of young people in Fresno, California.

His students are part of The kNOw Youth Media, an after-school program aimed at building community among youth, improving literacy skills and increasing the quality of life for families in the Central Valley.

Through this project, Joseph Smooke works as a community-based photographer.

“Not only is there not a lot of awareness of what this approach means among photographers,” says Smooke, “but also within the community. There’s not a lot of understanding of the power of photography to tell stories or create change.”

He has been working on this project since 2008. “It’s about trying to build awareness about one’s community through photography,” he says.  “It’s about helping the kids understand their community better, and working to help them realize that their community is different than other places.”

When he first began working with The kNOw, Smooke worried that the students would be jaded about photography. He expected them to take lots of pictures without really thinking about them. But that wasn’t what happened. “They’ve all been doing writing work with The kNOw, so they actually went the other way,” he said. “They thought really hard about what they were doing and only took five or six pictures. So I had to go the other direction, and encourage them to take more photographs.”

They work in teams, and each team picks a subject to focus on: benches, restrooms, stereotypes, agriculture, buildings, neighborhoods. Their learning process is very palpable. Even as I look at the work of Smooke’s students, I can see how their images are evolving, both within the pairs and as a group.

“The thought process is so evident in the pictures—it’s so emotional, and it’s amazing,” says Smooke. “That’s a big reason why I’m going back.”

I asked Joseph’s students (via questionnaire) some questions about what this experience has been like.

Marcus Vega, 20, who did a very moving essay for the winter 2010 edition of The kNOw on being homeless, wrote, “I’ve learned to recognize what others ignore. A new perspective.”

Jaleesa Vickers, 20, wrote, “I have learned that beauty can actually be found all around me, not just in a magazine, or on television.”

Jaleesa also writes poems and features for The kNOw, which is a fantastic publication. I encourage you to request a free copy of the latest edition by emailing Mai Der Vang at mvang@newamericamedia.org.

PhotoPhilanthropy is thrilled to be reaching out to community based photography programs through our inaugural Community Activist Award. I’ll be interviewing participants in Joseph Smooke’s program with The kNOw, to hear more about what it’s like to work with a photographer in this way, so stay tuned for that post. And submissions are now open–we look forward to seeing your work!

The artists featured in the kNOw’s slideshow are: Chanda Clark, Demar Duncan, Gracie Garcia, Meme Garrido, Anna Gil, Miguel Martinez, Kevis McGee, Luis Pacheco, Arena Phaphilom, Angelina Thao, Maria Valdez, Gabby Vang, Yee Leng Vang, Marcus Vega, and Jaleesa Vickers.

The dignity of choice

I was thinking about this TED talk, by Jacqueline Novogratz of Acumen Fund, in relation to some other ideas, and working on my piece for the week…and then I watched the talk again to check a fact. And it is just so good. And so I scrapped everything I was working on because, really, I think you should just watch this video. It rocks.

It’s about poverty, aid, economics and the dignity of choice. With some great anecdotes thrown in.

Acumen’s site has more on patient capital.

The earth is a complicated lady.

In honor of Earth Day, I want to take you into the PhotoPhilanthropy essay collection. We have some truly incredible work depicting some very complicated issues.

An activist known as the Weld Angel sits in a tripod blocking a logging road into the southern forests of Tasmania.

One of the most powerful essays I’ve seen is by Matthew Newton who photographed logging in the forests of Tasmania on behalf of the Huon Valley Environment Centre. His images have incredible storytelling power. He starts off by giving us a pair of images that sums up the controversy. (And it helps that he writes specific, direct captions.)

Old growth forests of The Weld Valley in Southern Tasmania earmarked for logging in 2009.

An activist stands upon a giant stump and stares towards the remaining forest. In the Styx Valley of Southern Tasmania.

He uses text within the frame—badges, signs, patches, tape—to help describe the complexities of this battle. He magnifies the marketing and communication that the people involved have initiated in order to articulate what’s going on.

A log truck driver at a pro logging rally in Hobart Tasmania.

He also zooms in and out on the issue,  photographing radically different environments and situations, which strengthens the narrative. He shows us that this is a story of individuals, of civic institutions, of an industry, and of a landscape and a region, as we see here:

After clearfelling logging coups are set alight with a napalm like substance.

This is just a killer essay. The one thing that shocks me is that it’s so recent. It looks like a fight that was fought decades ago. But it’s happening now.

To see more essays, click on the photographs below:

Neil Osborne, on behalf of SEE Turtles

Hawaii has become known as one of the best places in the world to get close to sea turtles. Maui, Hawaii, USA.

Eric Graham on behalf of ACCA

Anne Marie Musselman on behalf of Nyaru Mengteng Orangutan Sanctuary

Baby Orangutan at the Nursery at Nyaru Menteng Orangutan Sanctuary in Central Kalimantan after a fun day learning how to survive in the forest without their real mothers. Most of the residents here are victims of the Palm Oil Industry in Malaysia and Indonesia where Palm Oil plantations have taken the place of many species original habitats in over 90% of Borneo's forests. This sanctuary houses 700 orangutans.

Fazal Sheikh: fear, vulnerability and openness

Copyright Fazal Sheikh, "Minal Sleeping" from the project Ladli

Fazal Sheikh is an artist and activist based in Zurich, Switzerland. His work has been widely exhibited, in institutions ranging from the Tate Modern to the Princeton University Art Museum to small huts in rural India. He has collaborated with numerous foundations and non-governmental-organizations, and he has won, among many other awards, a MacArthur Prize.

I asked him to do an interview with the PhotoPhilanthropy blog because he approaches collaboration, strategic partnerships and accessibility in a way that I find very inspiring.

I began our interview by asking how Fazal made his way to photography. He told me about his transition from ceramics to photography, and about how he figured out what to focus on while doing a Fulbright project in Kenya. He was there at a time when a huge number of people were fleeing Somalia and Sudan and seeking refuge in Kenya. So he traveled to the refugee camps, in the north.

FS: It seemed such an obvious thing to do, this simple act, but others had not approached the elders of the community, to ask for their willingness and permission. So I realized that was a very simple and direct way to begin working.

To visit a place, with an extreme vulnerability—which you have when you arrive in such a situation…I felt that I didn’t quite know how to render it. In fact I felt very intimidated about the idea of even beginning to photograph.

I traveled that first time with journalists and photojournalists—they weren’t inhibited at all about beginning to work and move through the camp and make these images. And I think that was not my sensibility. I was fearful of the idea of trespass.

And over the years, since then—that was in the early 90’s—I’ve started to realize that this fear that you have when you first arrive in a place is a good thing. Because although you may not know how to render the place, you’re also open to what it has to offer you.

And in that regard, the act of collaboration is kind of essential, because if there is any strength in the work I think it’s largely borne of what the people have given to this process.  They have said, look, this is the thing that’s interesting about our community. You may have read such and such, but we feel that this story of this person is important. Or, we’ve got this problem that nobody’s talking about.

EG: How does the way you make a picture relate to your goals as an activist and as an artist?

Well, I’m not very grand in terms of declaring that I’m going to single-handedly change any given issue. I think that kind of heroism is a bit overvalued. I think the best that we can do is begin to nurture a conversation.

And so your priorities when you’re making an image come through very clearly in the images that are produced. I’m very careful about the nature of trespass and I’ve opted for very formal portraits in the notion that it gives the person the chance to confront the camera: to confront me and by extension, the viewer.

And I think that, for me, that has value because it kind of levels the playing field.

You may have images that are made in a more photojournalistic realm, which do garner funds for these aid organizations, and I think they probably do that very effectively, probably much more effectively than do mine.

But, having said that, I think that it’s important to expand the vocabulary. Because the notion of just giving money to something to assuage your guilt is a kind of hierarchical relationship, wherein I as the giver am always above the person who is the recipient of those funds. And I never have the notion that I could be in that position, so I don’t adjust my behavior in the world to keep that from happening in the future.

But I think that’s a subtler and perhaps more complicated interpretation of what making images means. I wouldn’t like to dismiss those other kinds of images, I’m just not particularly comfortable making them myself.

And I can’t get away from work that is in sync with my own sensibilities. If you spend all this time in remote places, you’d like to be making work that you can live with, that you can stand by.

In the war photographer or photojournalist there’s always this degree of heroism. And I think there’s not much that’s heroic about going to a place to live for a month amidst people who live there for decades. You know. That’s heroism.

I think that the best thing you can do is just be receptive to what people have to tell you; be a kind of a vehicle—not a grand vehicle, but just somebody [who can] go and respectfully listen.

EG: I want to ask you about the Human Rights series. It seems to me from watching you over the last few years that your partnerships have become more sophisticated and complex.

FS: I hope I’ve become a little more sophisticated!

Initially, I think it was around the year 2000, I was a little bit unsettled by the idea that, in Afghanistan, I made a book that cost, I don’t know, 60 or 80 dollars, far beyond the reach of affordability for someone who was in the book. And I thought, well, wouldn’t it be interesting to try and make work that would be a little bit more accessible, and disseminate it, distribute it in a more democratic fashion?

So, although I continue to do the books, I also try to engage projects which allow that information to be filtered out, usually free of charge, and sometimes even going to people who don’t expect to be receiving the material.

EG: How do you do that?

FS: Well there are many different ways and I’m not always sure how successful they are. Some are more politically motivated: I did a piece called Ramadan Moon, which I did in the Netherlands, wherein we distributed I think 1,000 copies of that book. They were mainly distributed to politicians, lawmakers, the media, and governmental officials in the Netherlands, because it was about a kind of impropriety in their handling of immigrant cases.

But more recently, for instance…with the two Indian volumes [Moksha and Ladli]…we produced a series of posters, with the Open Society Institute—the Soros Foundation—to be distributed to 1,000 institutions in India. Women’s rights groups, universities, places that could house a set of posters and then mount an exhibition if they so chose, and then the posters would also remain in whatever archive was receiving them.

Again the idea was that you could make something free and accessible and in this case very political because it traversed the region from early life through old age and what it means for women in contemporary Indian society.

These are all experiments, but some of them are more effective than others. You have to accept that perhaps 30% of those that are received, people don’t really engage with, because it comes as a surprise often. But on the other hand, the poster series has had hundreds of exhibitions from it. Again, places that never would mount a proper exhibition; in rural areas, sometimes just a local hut, outside, taped up on the walls.

So to engage different facets of working: I’m happy and proud that the work is shown in museums–it also goes to university museums where you can engage with students. But having said that, it’s nice to imagine that people can look at the books on the internet or they can see a poster exhibition in rural India.

EG: How do you deal with giving people copies of pictures?

FS: It depends on the project. In the early projects I worked on I used Polaroid film, and these were people, generally speaking, who had never been photographed before, so the act of this collaboration and formal portraiture was well-orchestrated in the camps.

And then I would take the books back. And on several occasions I’ve used the books, years later, as a means by which to try and trace people, for instance in the Somali camps. And then more recently, let’s say in Vrindavan, which is the city of the widows, going back and forth. I mean I was revisiting the same people over the course of a couple of years, so I would either give them pictures then, or come back with pictures, or send the book when it was finished.

It’s important, wherever possible, to make somebody understand what the act of documenting really means. When you ask somebody for their permission, do they understand what it means if they are from a really rural area, that their image is going to be in a book or in an exhibition or some such thing?

And on occasion I’ve failed in that regard, because they are giving their testimony as a kind of catharsis and expecting it, in a way, to be brought forward, because they were claiming their story. I’m thinking more of the Somali images, one component of which were these voices of women who had been assaulted.

And I was concerned at the time that somebody would be reduced to that one moment of trauma in their lives, and so I didn’t publish them, and only published them years later when I did the second book. It was called A Camel for the Son and was about, essentially, a decade of life on the borders. And then I realized, in fact, if somebody has been strong enough to endure and to overcome such trauma, maybe it’s important to honor that, you know? And that I had in some way erred in not publishing their stories.

There are times when someone offers a poignant story and you have to be sensitive to when it’s appropriate to bring it forward, and you also have to be aware of where your own inhibitions or inabilities lie. As much as possible.

EG: I was looking at A Camel for the Son and noticing that you’ve had it translated into Somali. And has that made a difference? Has that changed the way you’ve been able to interact with the subjects and with other people afterwards?

FS: That’s hard for me to really judge. It was, for me, essential that it be in the language that they could also access; even on the internet it’s in their language. And I try to do that. I tried to do that also later, in the Indian volumes. Again to make things accessible.

In general it’s very difficult to mark a tangible impact of these things.

But I think that’s not so important. I think the best thing you can do is to put your work out there in a respectful manner, and, of course, hope that you’re not working in a vacuum. Which, I mean, I guess I’m confident enough to say I don’t think I’m working in a vacuum, but I also don’t want to declare that this work is certainly going to impact the situation in a certain way.

EG: How have you selected your projects?

FS: The early projects were very much based upon this dual narrative: one was the document of the place and the people, and the other was a kind of exploration of my own heritage, whether it was in Kenya with the legacy of my father; or, after working on that for several years, I went to work on the piece about Afghanistan, which was also exploring the legacy left me by my grandfather, my namesake.

And after that I think I’ve been drawn to things that are related to me in a more subtle way; sometimes an emotional, psychological resonance. Particularly issues which are not given a great deal of attention by others.

I think if you’re going to spend so much time and emotion dedicated to something, you want it to be something you really care about and something that hasn’t been attended to in a way you think might be useful.

So, for instance, the ones that, at the outset, you might say are less directly linked to me and my history would be Moksha, right? Which is a story about a town to which widows migrate when they lose their husbands.

But for me this was interesting as a challenge, because I wanted to make a piece that, when one looked at it, you’d imagine that it could only have been made by a woman. So not only to forge bonds across a religious, cultural, social divide, but also even to reach across gender. To explore the idea that maybe it’s possible to make a piece…in which you can meet somebody on a human level that transcends your gender divisions.

And I think a lot of the emotional tone of that book is very much in sync with some of my internal history, which is less readily described.

EG: How did you find out about the widows?

FS: This was sort of unusual for my working process, but I had read a small piece many years ago about this place to which widows were migrating, and I just thought it was kind of fascinating as an idea: the notion of exile, solace, hope all mingled together.

And so I determined to make one trip to visit the community. And, as in most of my projects, I never know if there’s going to be a means by which to make something. But I think that it’s worthwhile just going at first to see, and to explore whether you feel comfortable there.

It was the same thing as going to the African camps, in a way. You go with this extraordinary interest but also with this vulnerability of not being sure if you can do anything. And like I said—I don’t know if I said that clearly enough—but that moment of being really vulnerable has a great value, because it implies an openness.

It’s a moment of dread and fear for me each time.

But almost every project that I’ve worked on, I’ve had that feeling wherein you’re confronted with things that are new, that you don’t understand, that are at times intimidating. But though you are vulnerable and even on the defensive, you’re more malleable. You carry some of your priorities forward and they meet what the place has to tell you.

Fazal Sheikh’s upcoming projects involve a mid-career survey of his portraits and the final installment of his trilogy of books based upon India. Loosely speaking, he says, that volume is about heaven.

Copyright Fazal Sheikh, "Kalawati" from the project Ladli

Art and progress

Oh man! I just read this great New York Times article about the new chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Rocco Landesman, who goes to congress this week to defend his budget.

I loved it because Mr. Landesman his colleagues talk about the connection between art, building community and economic development. Those things ARE connected, and it’s always crazy to me when I hear arguments suggesting they aren’t.

I’ve seen first hand, in a variety of situations, how art transforms and strengthens communities.

the eyelounge gallery, Phoenix

When I lived in Phoenix, I was lucky enough to meet two artists, community builders and entrepreneurs named Cindy Dach and Greg Esser. They have been instrumental in the metamorphosis of downtown Phoenix from dusty, empty lots and ramshackle structures to a vibrant arts district over the past decade. They have done this through a series of projects, both large and small. They’ve renovated an historic house, which they live in and rent out for events. They started an artist co-op gallery. They started an awesome store that sells beguiling artisan-made stuff. They started a nonprofit organization to advocate for and support the businesses in the neighborhood. They helped start a First Friday arts walk that now draws thousands of people each month. They’ve worked for and with the local government to create policies that support artists and encourage them to work in the community. And they’ve built a network of relationships with other community advocates, entrepreneurs and artists. Art, life, work, economic development, and community building are all intertwined in their lives. None exists without the others.

This is what local art looks like. This is what local art can accomplish. This is what the National Endowment for the Arts is talking about when they refer to art creating jobs, art building community, art revitalizing neighborhoods, art bringing people together.

Untitled, Greg Esser

Somehow, in contemporary American society, it has become fashionable to fund “science” and unfashionable to fund “art.” Science is associated with progress while art is associated with entertainment, escapism, and frippery. To toss out a fact, the National Institute of Health (NIH) “invests over $30.5 billion annually in medical research” (with an additional $10 billion at the moment, from the stimulus package), and the National Science Foundation (NSF), had a budget of $6.49 billion in FY 2009. The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), by contrast, had a comparatively miniscule 2009 budget of $155 million.

I bet that doesn’t seem strange to you. I bet you think, as I have in the past, “Oh, well, science and health—those things really matter. They really help people. Art is just for fun.”

But I no longer agree. I think we over-invest in science, and we under-invest in art.

I happen to be married to someone writing a dissertation on how we invest in science, and what we expect to get out of it. He spends a lot of his time chasing bureaucrats around, and interviewing them. It’s not quite big-game-hunting, but he seems to enjoy it.

He often talks about 3 central myths that we as a society uphold about science.

1. That an investment in basic research automatically leads to progress. (It doesn’t.)
2. That technical advancement automatically leads to a better world. (It doesn’t.)
3. That the more research you do around a problem, the easier it is to solve it. (Also not true. Often, the more research you do, the more uncertain you become about how to solve it.)

(More info on this topic is available in a new handbook for policy makers.)

I would say there are three corresponding myths about art, and all together, these misconceptions about science and art lead to our wildly disproportionate financial support of them.

What are the prevalent myths about art?

1. That art is irrelevant to the general public and has nothing to do with social progress.
2. That art is merely a cost, and not a driver of economic development.
3. That art is a superfulous luxury with a personal outcome.

Cindy Dach and Greg Esser are one example that proves all these myths wrong. I’m not saying we shouldn’t fund medical research and basic science, but I would love to see us invest a little more in art.

I would say a lot of progress comes from communication. And art is really, at its most basic level, about humans communicating with one another.

So if you’re looking to create social change through compassion, education, economic development and interpersonal understanding, then fund more art, congress. Good luck, Mr. Landesman.

P.S. If you want to hear Greg and Cindy talking about their work, here’s a short interview done in honor of their receipt of the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art’s 2009 Contemporary Catalyst Award.

Distribution–who's responsible?

Yesterday, I had an interesting discussion with one of my colleagues. We were talking about whether or not a photographer who has submitted an application for our award should be judged on his or her ability to distribute the photographs.

No way! said Claire. The photographer is responsible for making the picture. It’s our responsibility to help distribute it. They shouldn’t be evaluated based on their distribution.

No way! I said. If a photographer is serious about creating social change with pictures, they should be working to make sure people are seeing those pictures! It’s the photographer’s responsibility to distribute their images.

What do you think?

Marcus Bleasdale, a well known, old-school photojournalist from the UK wrote an outstanding piece for the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. In it, he talked about forging partnerships with organizations like Human Rights Watch, in order to get the right eyes on his pictures and have the facts there to back them up. Through innovative collaborations and strategic placement of his images, he’s seen tangible changes happen in the gold industry as a result of his work.

Marcus Bleasdale

He writes, “It was apparent that trying to create awareness through having my photographs published by a news organization was no longer viable in an industry struggling with its own set of problems.

“People consume information—at least fragments of it—in much larger quantities than in the past. It’s my job to present this younger generation with visual images they will understand and find engaging. If they remain uninterested, it isn’t their fault. It’s mine.”

His comments reminded me of my conversation with Josh Schachter, in Tucson, who is working on using radically unconventional outlets to distribute the work of his students–bus shelters and the pre-preview ad space sold in movie theaters.

A few thousand miles away, in Bangkok, Yumi Goto works with a team of 10 collaborators to create pdfx12, a monthly online publication that highlights the work of one photojournalist at a time. (You can download the archive here.) Of her entirely volunteer staff she says, “They all want to do something that they can dedicate to society, using their professional skills, because in their day jobs they are not necessarily helping society. We all want to help expose and promote photographers and issues.”

Cover of pdfx12, issue 39, image by Gustavo Jononovich

But even while she takes on the responsibility to promote others, she believes that each photographer has some responsibility to distribute their own work as well. “This kind of work, if they really want to change something, they have to think about distribution,” she says. “And if they don’t think about it, maybe they shouldn’t click.

“Many young photographers just want an adventure, just to go out into the field and click. But sometimes I think, if that is the case, maybe they should just take the money for the camera and for the plane ticket, and just give it to the people instead.”

Yumi Goto, I might add, is a master of distribution. Not only does she manage a major grassroots initiative in pdfx12, with its 2000 subscriptions and both English and Japanese editions, but she also maintains a new blog called “reminders–I WAS THERE,” and an enormous presence on Facebook, both personally and for the reminders project; and twitter, where she shares photo-related opportunities and information constantly. For Yumi, distribution is synonymous with generosity and relationship building.

“Big media are good too,” she says, “it’s good if they can save a spot for these longer stories. But with new media you don’t have to be published by big media to make a difference.”

For a few more distribution ideas, visit http://www.photophilanthropy.org/creative_publication.html