When Statistics Become Stories: Looking Into Their Eyes

By Allison Kwesell

Rotary World Peace Fellow, 2011

On January 14, 2010, two days after the earthquake hit Haiti I quit my job. I walked into the publisher’s office at my newspaper and told

him I needed to be in Haiti.

 

It was a mixture of gut reaction and faith, but I needed to be back in Haiti.

There is a rat race to journalism. There are journalists who seek to boost their careers by chasing natural disasters, wars, the depths of

human suffering. Bloody images win awards. As we see in Eddie Adams image from Vietnam, bloody moments can also change history.

I believe that documentation of such

moments is important.

When I returned from Haiti I was in shock. My time there was spent documenting while stepping over dead bodies through streets

covered in recent rubble and historical poverty.

I returned to my newspaper and many congratulations from colleagues for the work I had done. The articles were published for five

days on the front page of my newspaper.

 

Usually I am excited to see how my work looks in publication. This time it took me two months before I could even look at the stories in print or

filter through old images.

I was sick with sadness.

My newspaper gave me a raise and sent me back to Haiti six months later to find a similar

hopeless situation. Again, I returned to a stack of plaques and awards for the articles I had written

and won contests for the photos I had taken.

This boy was killed by Haitian police for stealing a bag of rice.

Images of dead bodies are too graphic to publish, and I believe they should not be published. But,

to show you the dichotomy of my life, from covering this amount of suffering in Haiti to

recognition in the United States, I feel that I need to show you some of these images.

The recognition that I received, for documenting in a country of stories filled with misery was a

terrible feeling.

I photograph not for this recognition, but because I believe documenting humanity, in its

beauty and in its suffering, is important.

It is crucial that my photos, of others’ stories are published on a variety of platforms. Only then

will their stories be known.

“We don’t take sides or preach right from wrong, we simply believe that powerful images and can make us think

beyond what we already know, enhancing our understanding of the world in which we live.”

http://www.worldpressphoto.org/foundation

Robin Hammond / Panos

Drought crisis in Somalia - in pictures

As thousands flee, and thousands more die, the refugee camps across the region are filling up

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2011/jul/14/somalia-drought-in-pictures#/?picture=376877140&index=15

I want you to think about how the following pictures, by Robin Hammond, make you feel.

Why are these images important?

They are images of people starving to death. They are disgustingly sad.

If even one moves you to want to understand the situation in Somalia more, or the sadness of

poverty, or pushes you to step outside of your own life to help, donate money, or even just

think, for one moment outside of your own life, I think they have served their purpose.

Have you ever considered what it is like to live in such a dwelling? Does the photographer

successfully make you feel or wonder about this?

I believe that it is not until individuals look beyond their immediate needs to understand the

needs, wants, perhaps conflicts of others

that humanity will even begin to take steps towards peace.

Rotary International is built upon this value of individuals looking beyond their immediate needs to understand the needs, wants, and

perhaps conflicts of others.

This is key to help the human condition to begin take steps towards peace.

As members of RYLA you have a unique opportunity within your own professional fields to work towards peace as a member of Rotary.

“We don’t take sides or preach right from wrong, we simply believe that powerful images

can make us think beyond what we already know, enhancing our understanding of the world

in which we live.”

What does it feel like to have to wait under the hot sun in line for water and food?

What does it feel like to have your child suffer as these children are. They are starving.

Peace starts with thinking outside of your own life. With realizing we are all on this planet

together.

As a journalist, I believe illustrating these stories, and putting them on platforms for the public eye to see is a crucial aspect in creating

understanding and empathy.

Some of you are doctors, others engineers, others students…what can you do to promote

peace?

To me, peace starts with understanding.

“The worst thing is to feel that as a photographer I am benefiting from someone else's tragedy. This

idea haunts me. It's something I have to reckon with every day because I know that if I ever allowed genuine compassion to be overtaken by personal

ambition, I will have sold my soul. The only way I can justify my role is to have respect for the other

person's predicament. The extent to which I do that is the extent to which I become accepted by the other; and to that extent, I can accept myself.”

- James Nachtwey

Photo by: James Nachtwey

Shiho Fukada: Japan

When Stories Hit Home

Shiho Fukada is a freelance photographer based in Beijing, China.

She is a native of Tokyo, Japan with a degree in English literature, who worked in the fashion and advertising

industries in New York before becoming a photojournalist.

Her work has been featured in numerous publications including The New York Times, Newsweek, Time,

Fortune, Geo, Stern, De Spiegel, Le Monde, Figaro, New York Magazine, among others.

http://www.shihofukada.com/#/a-town-dissappeared/JapanTsunami001

• Questions for Discussion:

– How did the media’s coverage, specifically photographs of the crisis in Japan make you feel?

– Do you see a purpose in coverage?

– Did you feel that there was too much, or not enough coverage?

BREAK

Illustrating Culture

I have been asked to report to you from the field of community service, e.g. fighting hunger, drinking water shortage, literacy, health and

poverty. To me, war, strife and suffering rises from these causes and I always choose to find

beauty, life and dignity in the eyes of the people living in these situations. My photographs have the opportunity to illustrate that these people are

worthy of better situations.

Heaven, Earth, Tequila: Douglas Menuez

http://mediastorm.com/pub/projects

Mary Diana Samuel Home

These photographs were taken of an orphanage in South India funded by an Indian Rotarian

living in the United States.

Without this orphanage the majority of these girls would either be starving or working as

beggars or sex workers.

My goal was to photograph their daily life.

I seek to illustrate the human spirit as well as its struggle.

Journalism is my life and I tend to see the world most clearly through the lens of my camera.

When I put my camera to my eye I feel that the world aligns. I am convinced that my camera is a powerful tool that brings human faces to issues being created by economics and power. To me the real issue of violence and neglect is most easily seen in the face of one person or one

family affected.

When someone who is suffering allows me into their life, to lift them on a pedestal in front of the

world, I better be sure I believe in the cause.

 

I have been asked to report to you from the field of community service, e.g. fighting hunger, drinking water shortage, literacy, health and

poverty. To me, war, strife and suffering rises from these causes and I always choose to find

beauty, life and dignity in the eyes of the people living in these situations. To me, my photographs have the opportunity to illustrate that these people

are worthy of better situations.

 

I feel that conflict is a broad term that not only relates to combat with weapons, but also the neglect of certain peoples and their human

rights. Desperate situations often spur hand to hand conflict between people. I feel strongly that if basic needs are met, such as clean water, food

and shelter, then education can follow and hopefully the desire to destroy one another that is born of hopeless frustration will diminish.

Documenting life in India

As members of RYLA you are not only deciding to better your own lives, you are entering a

global family of Rotarians. As youth you have the potential to bring your dreams to the table and make groundbreaking changes. Rotarians look towards us to find energy in youth and

perhaps even idealistic hope stemming from the innocence of youth.

 

 

My job is quite simple. Through the lens of my camera I simply try to draw a connection

between war or development, positive and negative to the people being affected. If any one of my pictures has made you, for a moment, feel

that you are outside of this comfortable air conditioned room and wonder, for a moment, what it is like to be living through their eyes.

Then I have been successful.

When I was a child I used to study maps and read books about different cultures. I read National Geographic religiously and would cut out and

collect photographs that made me think.

 

 

At 13 my dad bought me my first camera. It was a camera that took me through high school and in college I switched to an all-manual Pentax

camera from the 1960s without a working light meter. I shot black and white and color slide film and tried to master light. I am far from mastery

today, but feel that seeing light is one of my strong points.

 

 I graduated from The University of Montana with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. I loved

taking pictures but wanted to use photography as more than an art medium. At 19-years-old, days

after being accepted to a journalism school, I bought a one-way ticket to India. I stayed in India for one year. India changed me. And it

took me seven years to gain a bachelors degree.

I went through the normal roller coaster of culture shock and sadness when I saw extreme poverty that I was not used to seeing. But, more importantly and more than sadness, I found hope

and the opportunity to be a part of change.

  

My career has led me to work extensively in South Asia, the Caribbean, and the United

States. I covered the tsunami that hit Sri Lanka and India in 2004, Tibetan Diaspora across

South Asia, civil war in Nepal, the earthquake in Haiti and many refugee and immigration issues

in the United States.

Rotary PolioPlus

Above all my goal is to find and illustrate life between the cracks of these devastating

moments. My photographs should educate and inspire people to look for change.

 

I hope that I am not speaking out of line, but I encourage each of you, who has a dream beyond

the capacity of your societies expectations, to push the boundaries and follow your dream.

Respect and compensation will follow if you are truly acting out of your heart. I have yet to be

proven wrong in my own idealistic, innocent and youthful view.