liveBooks RESOLVE Blog feature: Gallery opening – Right now, online and you are invited!

FiftyCrows partner, liveBooks Inc. is the leading provider of custom photography website. This year they came out with a website deal that offers photojournalist/documentary photographer an affordable yet customized and professional way to have their images on the web. At FiftyCrows, we highly encourage photojournalist and documentary photographers to have a website as it enables their stories to be seen by anyone that has internet access.

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The liveBooks blog, RESOLVE is “a collaborative online community that brings together photographers and creative professionals of every kind to find ways to keep photography relevant, respected, and profitable.” The posts feature a variety of topics in the photography industry from new business models to traditional documentary projects. They highlight how and why people are doing what they are doing in the photography world as well as the details and importance of the specific project they are working on. On the FiftyCrows blog I will feature Resolve posts about photojournalist and documentary photography related issues that provide insight on how photography continues to create social change.

Gallery opening – Right now, online & you’re invited!

Thank you for joining us for the inaugural IMPACT online exhibition, a new project exploring the blog medium as a venue for photographic work. RESOLVE is excited to be hosting this experimental new project.

By clicking on the links below the IMPACT logo, you can move through the exhibition, viewing galleries of images, all related to the idea of “Outside Looking In.” Each “gallery” will include a series of images a photographer has uploaded to their blog along with this same IMPACT logo.

At any time you can click on the IMPACT logo to be taken to back to this post, where all the participating photographers are listed. (The “next” button actually takes you to a random gallery, so keep clicking if you get a repeat.)

By allowing viewers to move between different photographer’s online galleries, we hope to gain exposure for their work while providing a multifaceted visual study of the chosen topic.

We also wanted to remind viewers of the important role photographers play around the world, so we asked participants to share images from a project where they had an impact or were impacted themselves. If inclined, they have also included a link to an organization that they believe is having a positive impact on the world. Please help us increase this project’s IMPACT by sharing it with your community.

Enjoy!
The IMPACT Team: Yumi Goto, Miki Johnson, Paul O’Sullivan, Jeremy Wade Shockley

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Gazi Nafis Ahmed: Inner Face

Daniel Beltra: Tropical Deforestation

Fabiano Busdraghi: Physics, adventure, poetry and photography in Antarctica

Shiho Fukada: No Retirement Plan

Sean Gallagher: Desertification Unseen

Bill Hatcher: New Zealand Masters of Sport

Ed Kashi: A “Fady” in Madagascar

Michael Kircher: Adventure for Healing

Pete Marovich: A Look Inside the Old Order

Sara Mayti: The Sound of a 4.16

Thomas Peschak: Saving the Most Important Fish In the Sea

Ian Shive: American National Parks

Jeremy Wade Shockley: The Mountain Kingdom

Art Wolfe: The Ganges River

Rachel Wolfe: Jamaica

liveBooks RESOLVE Blog feature: Should photojournalists seek out the silver lining?

FiftyCrows partner, liveBooks Inc. is the leading provider of custom photography website. This year they came out with a website deal that offers photojournalist/documentary photographer an affordable yet customized and professional way to have their images on the web. At FiftyCrows, we highly encourage photojournalist and documentary photographers to have a website as it enables their stories to be seen and told to anyone that has internet access.

The liveBooks blog, RESOLVE is “a collaborative online community that brings together photographers and creative professionals of every kind to find ways to keep photography relevant, respected, and profitable.” The editor of Resolve, Miki Johnson, writes and features posts about a variety of topics in the photography industry from new business models to traditional documentary projects. She strives to highlight how and why people are doing what they are doing in the photography world as well as the details and importance of the specific project they are working on. On the FiftyCrows blog I will feature Resolve posts about photojournalist and documentary photography related issues that provide insight on how photography continues to create social change.

Should photojournalist seek out the silver lining?

Posted by Miki Johnson

Considering that today is World AIDS Day, this seemed like the perfect time to highlight a new book from photographer Karen Ande, Face to Face: Children of the AIDS Crisis in Africa. Although hardly the first person to document this topic, Karen’s emphasis on telling positive stories is unusual. And her technique presents a hard — but important — question for documentary photographers: Do too many images of suffering make people feel helpless to improve things?

These three women are members of a granny support group that meets weekly to discuss issues and solve problems related to caring for their many young charges. ©Karen Ande

Miki Johnson: Tell me about the book you just released with Ruthann Richter, Face to Face: Children of the AIDS Crisis in Africa. What was the impetus of this project and what were you hoping to achieve with it?

Karen Ande: This book represents the culmination of seven years of work. The project began in 2002 when I was traveling in Kenya with my husband and friends. Our tour guide asked me if I’d like to visit an orphanage she had opened in the town of Naivasha and photograph the children, whose parents had died of AIDS.

I agreed to do it, thinking it would be a one-time visit that might result in a few shots she could use for fundraising. I did not realize that the children would charm me and that their survival hung in such a delicate balance. The orphanage ran out of rice the day I was there.

We left them with some money for food and I eventually went home and began to print the photographs. When I saw the images emerge in the developing tray I realized that I had an opportunity and a decision to make. I could choose to become involved in this issue or not. I chose to get involved, to reach out to nonprofits who were already supporting projects, to make multiple trips to document this issue. It has taken an enormous amount of time and personal finances, but I have never looked back.

Vannah is only 15 years old but is caring for five younger brothers and sisters after their parent's death from AIDS. ©Karen Ande

I am driven by this issue — 12 million children have been orphaned by AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. There is little infrastructure to care for the children, but many local people whom I have met through NGO’s have creative viable projects that make a difference in these children’s lives. I hope this book will convince people to take a close look at the children I’ve met and begin to care enough to try to help them.

MJ: You’ve said that when you started photographing it was important to you to focus on the positive, things are getting better and people who are making a difference. Why was this so important to you?

KA: People do not hang around to be depressed. The media overexposes us to images of suffering I think, consistently giving us two messages: 1) there is really nothing one person can do to affect these overwhelming problems, and 2) money donated to Africa will be diverted by corrupt governments and aid agencies and never get to the people who need it.

In fact there is a great deal one person can do if they know how. If you donate to organizations working with in-country activists who know and understand their communities’ needs, the money is not wasted. In fact it is often the best way to help, as these projects are generally successful and sustainable. We list many NGO’s in our book that support these types of projects.