Story Collaborative Socially Engaged Photography Programs
Zefanias “Jeff” Joel Zango discusses why he made some of the images he made during a Listening Session attended by about 40 of his fellow fishermen in Závora, Mozambique. In collaboration with Rare. (photo: Brian Ullmann/Rare)
A Facebook post on the community group page after our final exhibition of the Klemtu’s youth’s photographs. When a photography exhibit becomes more interesting than video games, you know you’re on to something.
We have run workshops with partner organizations including World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy, Rare, Working Assumptions Foundation, and USAID, in the Philippines, Mexico, Mozambique, Namibia, Madagascar, Peru, Canada, the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Reservations, and the United States. The Story Collaborative process is specifically based on established participatory or socially engaged media methodology but focused on and customized for the dynamics between our partners and the communities they work within.
The future of Story Collaborative includes working closer to home and expanding to include filmmaking as well as other visual arts mediums. As an example, we are currently awaiting decisions on a series of grants through several Colorado-based organizations for working in different ways with Native youth and others in our local Indigenous community to explore Indigenous ways of knowing in the context of the impacts that settler colonist values have had on us all.
If you are interested in how we can help integrate Story Collaborative workshops into the work you are doing and more deeply engage those communities in that work, contact us, and we can share more information on the process along with examples of how these efforts have impacted communities.
We began developing the Story Collaborative program as a participatory photography process in 2016 to prioritize listening to local Communities and begin to dismantle the “Savior vs. Saved” narratives in international nonprofit work. Our program strives to rebalance issues of authorship and representation, promoting equity and inclusion in purpose-driven nonfiction storytelling through sharing wisdom as we work together toward the healing of all people and the planet. We learn with and from our collaborators—not just about them.
These collaborations are not typical photography or filmmaking workshops. We are not teaching camera work or how to be photographers or filmmakers. We are simply providing the tools, essential technical support, and a framework designed to help develop new layers of visual literacy and facilitate the creation and broader sharing of meaningful stories using the media arts as a means of self-expression and catalyst for community conversations. We’re holding space (and sharing our connections to new spaces when appropriate) to honor the community’s voice in our collective conversations about social, environmental, political, and cultural issues that affect us all.
A behind-the-scenes video from a recent workshop in Namibia. You can also view some of the photographers’ photos online at the WWF website.
Articles in WWF’s World Wildlife featuring the work of four members of the Oglala Lakota Nation (above), and seven photographers living in Dzilam, Mexico (below).
Zefanias “Jeff” Joel Zango in Zavora, Mozambique photographing a women’s savings group meeting.
Working with First Nation’s Youth in Klemtu, Canada, on a participatory photography and storytelling summer workshop through The Nature Conservancy. (photo: Melissa Dale/TNC)
We have spent most of our careers in magazines, documentary film, and photojournalism and have seen many examples of manipulative, extractive, inequitable, not always intentional but as a result harmful storytelling done on behalf of the people and communities in front of the cameras and at the heart of the stories. And, unfortunately, it is these outside perspectives that dominate and define how most of us learn about people and places that are not our own.
I have been a ‘Concerned Photographer’—a term coined in the 1960’s by International Center of Photography (ICP) founder Cornell Cappa to describe “photographers who demonstrate in their work a humanitarian impulse to use pictures to educate and change the world, not just to record it”—for my entire career. And for the last decade, I have focused exclusively on projects exploring how we live on the planet and with each other, and almost always in ignored, under-represented, or under-served communities. Breaking down the barriers between photographer and subject and recognizing how much even more powerful photography can be when we listen to, learn from, and collaborate with each other, is the logical next step for me in making sure the work I do is beginning to proactively address diversity, equity, access, inclusion, and justice.