“In a war, the normal codes of civilized behavior are suspended. It would be unthinkable in so called normal life, to go into someone’s home, where the family is grieving over the death of a loved one, and spend long moments photographing them. It simply wouldn’t be done.”

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.

The Municipal Dump in Phnom Penh was the scene of abject poverty and hardship. It closed its gates in 2009 but is this the end of the story, what has happened to the people who worked as scavengers on the dump. The new dump has been moved several miles outside of the city and NO scavenging is to be allowed.

People of colour in South Africa, through the apartheid years, had limited opportunity and access to formal education. Ukulapha was recently formed with the overall objective of facilitating the growth, development, and empowerment of previously disadvantaged and abused South African people.

Two years ago, Anna Politkovskaya was gunned down in the elevator of her building. Politkovskaya was a journalist who was well-known for covering Russian governmental abuses and, in particular, the wars in Chechnya.

December 1st is World AIDS Day, and today and every day 4,000 people will die of AIDS in Africa. Important medical advances are not reaching Africa, but you can help.

Voices of Sudan, a photography book by David Johnson, hopes to raise awareness of the daily strife of the victims of the genocide in Darfur. 100% of the profits go directly towards constructing wells and supplying medicine to refugees in the region.

Highlights from the Collective Lens Flickr group.

Julien Harneis’ photos from the Democratic Republic of the Congo tell us a story of hardship and hope. He is in Eastern DRC, near the Rwandan border, as UNICEF Chief of Field Operations working to alieve the problems of displaced populations, including child soldiers, sexual violence, poor education, unclean drinking water, and health and sanitation issues.

The Big Picture’s Faces in Sudan displays some very well done photographs of some the people most affected by the tragic events over the last few years in the region.