Webinars Series: Reimagining Media Narratives and Community Representation

Beyond the Outsider’s Gaze: Partnering With Communities in Visual Storytelling

 Key Highlights:

• “Being responsive in my work is about being in constant conversation with the folks that I'm collaborating with. It’s about active listening; It's not about bringing your own assumptions into the storytelling process. It's not about making unilateral decisions without participants' consent. It's essentially about building something from the ground up with the people that you're working with. And therefore in that process, it addresses the needs and the experiences of the folks that you're working with, and therefore, is relevant to them completely right,” Justin Maxon said. 
• “We both agreed in the beginning that we wouldn't do anything that would cause any more harm than what I've already gone through. And so I trusted Justin to know that he would not do anything that would harm me or my family more than we have been,” Judith Surber said. 
• “I knew something like this needed the time and care, and we worked on it for probably almost a year. we let the the narrative unfold naturally the big moments of Judy's life and her family's life.
  "I would say we're really in service of the story, and it wasn't about, you know, hitting a deadline…. it was a really long and careful process with consistent check-ins, with Justin and Judy,” Jacqueline Bates said. 
• “There is no money in telling long-form stories because it's not lucrative… What I've been able to do is to work on not just thinking about the end product, which is where we're gonna publish or what editor I'm gonna work with. But realizing that these things take teamwork amongst many organizations… We have to collaborate across the board amongst many organizations to make these things happen,” Brian Frank said. 
• “I think if it's something that you really care about, and if it's people that you really care about, you need to work with an editor who cares as much as you, and who trusts you, and who you can communicate with. Because not all editors are equal and that also has to be a relationship that's based on trust and built over time,” Frank said. 
• “The idea of building a mutual relationship around trust is at the forefront, right? And in that process, everything is open, everything's communicated. There's nothing that's kept from the person that you're collaborating with. I think that if we're trying to really shift narratives that have been harmful to folks, historically speaking, I think transparency is essential. So essentially opportunities, resources, crediting is shared. 
  "One of the other things that I also bring into my work is this idea of understanding my own history, my own positionality, and how my own experiences have shaped how I see the world, and therefore how I interpret it through my lens. And I think that's really important, because we all bring our own prejudices. We all bring our own assumptions based on our lived experience. And unless we're in constant dialogue with those assumptions, we could bring those into the way in which we represent the spaces that we work in. Right?” Maxon said. 

Reframing Media Narratives of Addiction

 Key Highlights:

• “I was just so impressed by her candor and and rawness, and what she was willing to share with people. It really felt like this piece had the opportunity to really change how people view the addiction crisis in the United States. You were hearing from her directly, and because she is part of this unique community, that was interesting. At the same time, there's nothing more universal than a mother's love for their children, or a grandmother's love for their grandchildren. And that I think is sort of something that unifies a lot of people who have been touched by addiction. So it felt both like a unique perspective to share with readers, and yet also something so familiar, unfortunately, to so many people in the United States,” Alexandra Sifferlin said.
• "What are the easiest images to capture right around addiction? What’s in plain sight? People using. I think that lends itself to perpetuating those notions and those narratives that further isolate the user. And I think addressing isolation is an important part of challenging the way in which that is represented. There's a journalist named Johann Hari, and he mentions that ‘the opposite of addiction is not sobriety, it's connection," Maxon said.
• “The images that we see, needle in the arm, what they are is they’re photographs of actions. And it's very easy to associate a choice with an action, right? So when we see someone using, we're like, ‘Oh, that person chose to use.’ Then there's blame and shame. But we're not asking the larger questions. What are the conditions that lead people to using?” Maxon said. 
• “Many of our photo essays humanize the headlines… When thinking about running sensitive imagery, there's a lot of thought that goes into that… If they are sensitive, are they adding a significant value for our readers? Thinking about our unconscious bias. Would we publish an equivalent photograph if we were closer to the victim? Does it respect the dignity of the people pictured?” Bates said. 
• “I was extremely scared [the morning it published], and I I felt sick. I have to tell you that I have got nothing but positivity from all over the world, from France and New Zealand and Spain and Canada. I think one of the nicest ones, was a man in Missouri, who emailed and said ‘I'm only here today because there was somebody in my life like you who cared about me when I couldn't care about myself.’ So everything I got back was so positive, so caring, so supportive. It helped lift me a lot, that I'm not in this alone,” Surber said.