Facing Change Documenting America
By Michael Boyajian
It is an old biblical saying that says blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. Well a modern play on this might be that blessed are the photographers for they may save the planet. Ten superstar photographers, representing the likes of the New York Times, national magazines and Pulitzer Prize ranks, have joined together to form an organization that picks up where FDR’s Farm Security Administration or FSA left off documenting America with their cameras as a nonprofit group called Facing Change as a means to improving the lives of the country’s forgotten populations.
The group embeds themselves in communities for months at a time to learn from those communities and tell a story with their imagery of the hardships they have endured paving the way for future improvements to their well being. The group has captured the essence of the Gulf Coast following the BP spill, New Orleans after Katrina, Arizona with passage of its immigration law and the Rust Bowl of upstate New York.
Facing change picks up where declining media outlets leave off by showcasing their imagery on their web site, www.facingchange.org One group leader, Alan Chin, recently returned from the Gulf Coast recording events there after the oil spill helping to provide needed analysis of the impact of the disaster on the local community there.
Yes a picture often tells a story more dramatically than a page of text and so these photographers are working to preserve this powerful medium as the environment for photojournalism changes using the web page as a projector into the mindset of America making them not just great artists but all great American heroes as well enduring to save our country and our planet.
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