It’s so much a part of our world, our innate curiosity about people. We like to look at pictures of them! We like to take them and we like to look at them. It’s what we do as human beings that have this tool—the camera. it’s just so much a part of understanding the world that we have to negotiate with it. We have to figure it out.

“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

During the weekend’s visit, my host, Peat, told me about another photographer who has had a major impact on the Tasmanian landscape, Peter Dombrovskis. I want to tell you the story that Peat told to me.

And how, as a photographer, can you help a nonprofit use your images? Is it enough just to donate photographs, or do you have a responsibility to help an organization actually communicate?

Once again, there are a lot of different answers to these questions, and they depend a lot on the specifics of the organization in question. Sometimes foundations are responsible for supporting organizations effectively. A grant will make a bigger impact if it isn’t just for a set of photographs, but also for the other elements of an effective advertising or awareness campaign. Sometimes it’s up to the organization to solicit pro bono contributions from professionals with the relevant skill sets. And sometimes it might be up to an individual–perhaps the photographer!–to put in place the other elements of a successful project so that their personal contribution is meaningful.

Should photographers be paid to work for NGO’s?

Well, YES! And no. I mean, of course! Except…sometimes not.

This is a complicated question.

“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.”

“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.”

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.

PhotoCastNet has an interview with Zoriah, a war photographer recently stripped of his privileges to document the war in Iraq. Similarly, The Big Picture (boston.com) has a photo essay of the war in Iraq, now 5 years running.