“During that month,” he told me, “I would sit with families in their homes in Kibera for an hour or two, talking. And by the end of our conversation, they would have pulled out these amazing, old photographs from shoeboxes that they had never shown anybody outside of their own family. This documentation of the Nubian community was something that nobody had ever seen before. So the pieces of this project were already all there

The Freedom to Create Prize celebrates the power of art to fight oppression, break down stereotypes and build trust in societies where the social fabric has been ripped apart by conflict, violence and misunderstanding. History shows that prosperous societies are founded upon creativity. Societies that encourage artistic expression build strong foundations for economic, political and cultural development. They will lead tomorrow’s world.

This morning, I caught up with James Chance, who has just won the Emerging Vision prize sponsored by Pictures of the Year International. He receives a $10,000 grant plus exhibition at the Annenberg Space for photography in Los Angeles, and the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri. You can [...]

I am in Haiti for a week as a student PhotoPhilanthropist to do a shoot with MercyCorps, shooting images of their relief projects as well as general pictures around Haiti in order to help them tell their story.

“It’s grabbing everybody,” says Marcus Vega, a participant in the kNOw’s photography class in Fresno with artist Joseph Smooke. “Like when I come here, I get to escape from my daily life. It just cancels out everything. It’s like a whole new environment.”

Activist Award Director Kathleen Hennessy travels to Guatemala as a volunteer photographer and meets Claudia Jona, an 11-year-old Mayan girl. “Being journalists, we are trained not to get too close, to be objective. How can you be objective when it comes to a suffering child? But, here, I am not working as a journalist. I am a volunteer. I have permission to care. I have permission to give.”

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.

Kathleen Hennessy is the Director of Photography at the San Francisco Chronicle and has just joined PhotoPhilanthropy as the Activist Award Director for 2010.

I asked her everything that came rushing into my head. What is your editing process like? And how do you think photography creates social change? And what advice do you have for people submitting photo essays to PhotoPhilanthropy? Here’s what she said.

Orphfund is raising money to build orphanages in Haiti, and needs your help.

Potosi, Bolivia Miners: 5 Centuries Deep is a photo documentary project that aims to explore the changing face of the mining community and mining industry in Potosi, Bolivia. Photographer Irina Zhorov hopes to bring more awareness to the situation of the miners, the surrounding towns, and the economic implications of foreign ownership.