I’m pleased to report that popular clothing company Nau has just launched their first annual Grant for Change “supporting those who instigate lasting, positive change in their communities.”  This is a somewhat unique grant in that the $10,000 award recipient is selected by popular vote.  Blue Earth project photographer Benjamin Drummond and Sara Joy Steele have been nominated for their Facing Climate Change project for the award, and we encourage your support of their project!

Visit the Grant for Change program page to cast your vote for Facing Climate Change today!

- Bart J. Cannon, Program Manager

Three women at Fiesta. © Judy Blankenship

Blue Earth currently sponsors about 30 photographic projects.  Over the years, different projects have run their course and moved forward on their own.  But that doesn’t mean they are any less important today than they were when Blue Earth first sponsored them.

This week, I’d like to highlight Judy Blankenship’s project on The Canari Of Southern Ecuador.  Her project emerged as the result of many trips to the region documenting indigenous culture and resulted in a book, Canar: A Year in the Highlands of Ecuador that was published in 2005.  She has gone on to work with the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.

- Bart J. Cannon, Program Manager

Today we begin a new series on the blog featuring selected articles from Shooting From The Heart: Photography That Makes A Difference, our highly regarded handbook for photographers developing documentary projects.  Over time this series will include most of the articles from the handbook, but if you can’t wait for the full series to be published, feel free to download a free PDF version of Shooting From The Heart and have a copy to keep as your own!

Beginning The Process

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

You have an idea for a documentary project.  You find yourself thinking about it all the time.  It is a story that has to be told.  One that no one is telling.  One that you want to communicate through your photographs.  You decide that you have to act on your convictions.

Now the hard work begins.  Decisions have to be made: how best to photograph the story, who to talk with, where to go, when to go, how to fund it.  You are overwhelmed.

I know the feeling.  I’ve been there.  In 1983 I had a burning desire to tell the stories of salmon and the cultures that depend on the salmon around the Pacific Rim.  Sure, there were plenty of stories in the newspapers about salmon.  But they were stories about one small aspect—such as the closure of sport fishing seasons for lack of fish.  No one was looking at the story in its entirety.

For the next year I researched the story and requested all news-paper assignments relating to salmon. I knew this would be a good project for the Alicia Patterson Foundation.  I had heard about this nonprofit when I first started in photography.  Each year six to eight journalists, including photographers, are selected for these fellowships.  In 1986 I received one.  The grant allowed me to take 14 months off from my newspaper photography job to pursue the story.  I was ecstatic.  But I soon realized that, although most people make a plan and then look for money, I had the money and no plan.

The story was huge, and complicated by the fact that salmon return to the rivers of their births just once a year. How was I ever going to cover it all?

After a month of sleepless nights and anxious days, I realized that it just couldn’t be done. I had to find situations that would rep-resent different aspects of the story.  I took a week to concentrate on writing the general theme of the project.  Then I divided it into different categories, such as life cycle, logging impact on streams, gillnetting, and marine mammal interception.  In those days before computers, I wrote everything I knew on index cards according to subject and organized the cards in piles on the floor of my bed-room-turned-office.

As the piles grew, the project seemed to divide itself into five main areas: the incredible life cycle of the salmon and the creatures that feed on the fish; commercial and sport fishing; Indian fishing and ceremonies; salmon farms and ranches; and habitat destruction.  I examined each set of index cards to determine what situation would make the best photographs and when the best time to photograph was.  I then made hard decisions about what not to photograph.

For example, I could have photographed Indians fishing anywhere in the Northwest, Canada, or Alaska.  I decided that the dip-net fishery on the Klickitat River in Washington would exemplify not only the current dependence on salmon of the Yakama Indians, but also the traditional fishing that members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition wrote about in the early 1800s.  As they did in the old days, the fishermen stood on platforms hung from the walls of the river’s canyon.  Using nets on long poles, they caressed the bottom to find the hidey-holes where the salmon rested. Most important, the Yakama Indians had agreed to give me access, the spring chinook fishing was just beginning, and the Klickitat was only a five-hour drive from my Seattle home.

After I had decided what and where to photograph, I transferred each subject onto Post-it notes.  I placed those on a 12-month calendar.  I then had a visual outline that could be adjusted as my plans changed.  (Today many software programs make this organizational task even simpler.)

As soon as I made these hard decisions, I felt a weight lift from my chest.  Although I did not have every single decision, trip, or con-tact finalized, I did have enough to begin doing what I love: photographing real people living their lives.

I had discovered that by dividing the overall story into smaller stories I could get my arms around it.  Instead of planning my whole year, I took one month at a time.  My 10-year project began with a theme, piles of index cards, a calendar, and one small step.

Natalie Fobes

ArtCorps
Deadline: August 30, 2009

ArtCorps’ mission is to advance social change initiatives by promoting arts and culture as powerful tools to generate cooperative and sustainable work between development organizations and the communities they serve.   We send artists to Central America to work with environmental, health and human rights organizations.   During one-year residencies, artists use every imaginable art form including theater, mime, puppetry, mural painting, sculpture and poetry to bring the organizations’ environmental and social messages to life and engage the local community in their activities.  ArtCorps is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization.

Apply now for opportunities in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.  Contact Marta Oslin at info@artcorp.org or +1 (978) 927-2404 x4 with questions.

[W]hen I again found myself crossing the border, the circumstances felt all too familiar, and I carried with me the fear that there was nothing new I could document. … This is the challenge of coming to Gaza: how to shed new light on one of the world’s most thoroughly photographed human tragedies?

The series of photos does not highlight the conflict per se - there are no images of tanks, burned out buildings, or rubble.  Instead, his focus is on creating intimate portraits of the people living in the wake of this ongoing disaster.

The Virginia Quarterly Review is available in print at your local newsstand as well as online.

- Bart J. Cannon, Program Manager

We have been pleased to report on the progress this spring of Bert Teunissen with his Blue Earth sponsored project Domestic Landscapes: Eastern Europe highlighting changing domestic interiors across Europe.  Now we are able to report that Teunissen has just added a new series from his recent work in the Czech Republic.  The new work is a collection of compelling photos, many of which were taken inside what might be called “traditional” homes, which capture a lifestyle slowly disappearing from an aggressively modernizing Europe.

These new images are from only one of several series he will be completing during the next two years for the project, including trips to the Ukraine, Russia, and Moldavia.

- Bart J. Cannon, Program Manager

Picture This: Caring for the Earth
Deadline: August 31, 2009

Picture This: Caring for the Earth is a photo contest seeking out single photos and photo essays profiling people in Africa working to reduce the effects of climate change in their countries, cities and communities.

The contest is sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme in partnership with Olympus Corporation and the Agence France-Presse (AFP) Foundation.

Prizes include the latest in Olympus equipment; a trip to New York City for the first prize winners; and a working fellowship with an AFP bureau in Africa for one lucky first-prize winner in the professional category.

The deadline is August 31st.  You must have lived in an African country for at least 12 months before that date to be eligible to enter.

It has been a busy season for Blue Earth project photographer Greg Constantine traveling to continue work on his project Nowhere People, documenting the daily lives of persons coping with statelessness across the globe.  Rather than trying to summarize the highlights myself, I’ll let Greg speak in his own words:

2009 has been a very productive year for the project and all I can do is try to keep up the momentum.  In early January I returned to Bangladesh to follow up on my work on the stateless Rohingya.  And in April, with the support of Oxford Brookes University in the UK, I traveled to Sri Lanka to photograph the struggles of Hill Tamils working on the tea plantations in the central hills, many of whom continue to be stateless.

In June, POWER Magazine in Hong Kong ran a great photo essay and story of my work on the stateless Nubian community in Kenya.

Lastly, a photo essay from my work on the stateless Dalit in the Terai of southern Nepal, was just named the winner of the 2008 Harry Chapin Media Award (HCMA) for photojournalism (formerly called the World Hunger Media Award).  The essay, “Stranded In the Middle Ground” was published in the Himal Southasian Magazine in May of 2008.  Earlier this year, this essay also received an Honorable Mention: Best Published Picture Story (small markets) category in the 2009 NPPA Best of Photojournalism.  …

This summer and fall will be extremely busy and very productive for this project.  I’ll certainly keep you all posted with any new publications and developments.

One other item I would also note is that last month Greg was honored by the Asia Society with the Osborn Elliott Prize for Excellence in Journalism on Asia.  I’m pleased to extend our congratulations!

- Bart J. Cannon, Program Manager

Aperture
Deadline: July, 16 2009

The purpose of the Aperture Portfolio Prize is to identify trends in contemporary photography and specific artists whom we can help by bringing them to a wider audience. In choosing the first-prize winner and runners-up, we are looking for work that is fresh and that hasn’t been widely seen in major publications or exhibition venues.

First prize is $2,500. The first-prize winner and runners-up are featured in Aperture’s website for approximately one year. Winners are also announced in the foundation’s e-newsletter, which reaches thousands of subscribers in the photography community.

Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs
Deadline: August 11, 2009

To assist individual artists in this economic climate, applications for 2010 CityArtists Projects are opening early.  Seattle-based artists working in visual, literary or film/media arts may apply this summer for funding of up to $10,000 to support projects starting in January 2010.  CityArtists Projects is an annual funding program that provides support to individual Seattle artists to conceive, develop and present new, in-progress or remounted works taken to the next stage. Projects must include a public presentation in Seattle.

Eligibility: Seattle-based individual artists proposing projects in the visual, literary and film/media arts. Traditional ethnic or multidisciplinary projects must include at least one of the disciplines listed above.

If you are in town, the gallery is hosting an opening reception from 6-8 p.m. today.

- Bart J. Cannon, Program Manager