Collective Lens: Photography for Social Change

by Kathleen Hennessy, Director of Photography at the San Francisco Chronicle, and Activist Award Director at PhotoPhilanthropy.

In honor of Earth Day, I want to take you into the PhotoPhilanthropy essay collection. We have some truly incredible work depicting some very complicated issues.

Oh man! I just read this great New York Times article about the new chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Rocco Landesman, who goes to congress this week to defend his budget.

I loved it because Mr. Landesman his colleagues talk about the connection between art, building community and economic development. Those things ARE connected, and it’s always crazy to me when I hear arguments suggesting they aren’t.

During a recent trip to Savannah, Georgia I began to see my  "traveler's eyes" a different way. On one hand I was

seduced by the soft, warm breeze, Spanish mosses in gray green curtains billowing out from every tree, pink azaleas

beginning to escape from their buds into a southern spring. On the other, trash caught in grass emerging along

roadways, an oil slick circling with an eddy on an estuary, and abandoned buildings leaning into one another

between grande dames in neat brick from another century.

Yesterday, I had an interesting discussion with one of my colleagues. We were talking about whether or not a photographer who has submitted an application for our award should be judged on his or her ability to distribute the photographs.

No way! said Claire. The photographer is responsible for making the picture. It’s our responsibility to help distribute it. They shouldn’t be evaluated based on their distribution.

I have learned more about my country, and the major social issues people are facing in it, from a “fictional” television show than I have from mainstream news media in the last couple of years. And that’s because I watched the Wire.

[caption id="attachment_543" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Phymean hands out the eggs"][/caption]

In the UK there's an old saying,''an Apple a day keeps the Doctor away'', this has been adopted here in Cambodia for the children of the PIO school, but using eggs and a daily multivitamin suppliment tablet.

[caption id="attachment_536" align="alignleft" width="199" caption="Partially sited Lady at Stung Meanchey, Cambodia"][/caption]