With an eye toward prison reform, writer and academic Pete Brook analyzes prison photography from behind his desk. After three years, he decided it was time to get out, on the road, and meet the people he’d written about. Especially the prisoners.

Pete is clear that he isn’t a photographer. Instead, he writes for Wired.com’s RAW File and runs his own blog where he dissects photography about the prison system in America. I knew him peripherally through the photo community and through introduction several years ago by a mutual friend. I like what he does, so when he put out an ask to help make a Kickstarter video, I offered to shoot it and Seattle Times staffer Erica Schultz edited it with Pete in an 11 hour binge.

Prison Photography has built a community over the years. There’s no money involved, so for Pete to get on the road, he had to ask for help. The Kickstarter campaign began. By using social media and crowd-sourced funding, he successfully raised more than he thought it would cost to make the grand American tour, meeting photographers in person, visiting prisons, and seeing education programs at work.

Click here or below to read more and see a scene cut from the video.

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Several months ago I entered the Link TV ViewChange contest, looking for another means of distribution for a story I felt needed to be told. As a finalist, I found Srey Neth’s story would see the distribution I hoped for. I think it is a great example of independent distribution leveraged by social media.

Yesterday, Link TV told me they’ve compiled half-hour episodes from the ViewChange entries. Srey Neth’s story will air in the “Crossing the Gender Gap” episode.

The film will air Wednesday, March 16th at 8:30pm PT/ 11:30pm ET and Saturday, March 19th at 6:30pm PT/ 9:30pm ET on DIRECTV 375 / DISH Network 9410. Srey Neth: Victim to Survivor will be part of an episode featuring inspiring stories of women fighting poverty, disease, and oppression in the developing world.

The film is also available to watch at Hulu.com/viewchange and Link TV is planning to disseminate my film through other outlets as well such as Snag Films, WGBH’s “World” Channel (which is carried on 150 PBS stations), and other international stations.

Many thanks again to Transitions Global and Srey Neth who offered me access and their trust to tell an important story.

www.linktv.org/programs/viewchange (where the “Crossing the Gender Gap” episode will be available online, starting later today)
www.viewchange.org/videos/srey-neth-victim-to-survivor (Srey Neth video on ViewChange.org)

@ViewChange (twitter)
@LinkTV (twitter)
facebook.com/viewchange
facebook.com/linktv

And don’t forget my Facebook Page and Twitter Feed!

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I watched producer Eric Maierson sorting through hundreds and hundreds of images by photographer Walter Astrada as he did the initial work for the newly released MediaStorm piece “Undesired.”

Not only is Maierson an excellent producer, having watched his two pieces “Three Women” and “The Party,” I knew he had the voice to produce Astrada’s strong work. I only regretted I wasn’t working on the project, and that I would return to Seattle before having the chance to meet Astrada in person, when he came into the MediaStorm office.

I have much respect for Astrada’s work, particularly his portfolio from Guatemala. It is strong, visceral, and pointedly focused on the issue of violence against women. Having extensively worked in this field myself, I appreciate another photographer’s dedication not just to a single story, but to the issue as a whole.

In 2009 he won the Photojournalist of the Year NPPA’s Best of Photojournalism. He won in World Press Photo in 2006 and in 2008.

Read about Astrada, his work, and how he does it, online at the British Journal of Photography here and here.

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In early 2008, I visited the Children’s Surgical Center on the outskirts of Phnom Penh at the request of one of its US-based supporters. I was working for a few NGO’s while in Cambodia and using the time to continue my personal work on human trafficking. At the Center, I found a woman who recently had acid thrown upon her. I forget the circumstances of the attack, but her grand daughter was also covered by the indiscriminate spray, and had already died. The woman was feverish with infection, her breath rapid and shallow, and the doctors fought a losing battle. Blood transfusions seeped out of her damaged skin faster than they could replenish her fluids. Her adult children watched over her, fanning her, slack-faced and in shock. A few days later the woman died.

I had heard of acid attacks before, but hadn’t thought about it in Cambodia. Although barely quantified at the time, readily available acid in Cambodia’s violence desensitized and traumatized society meant acid attack was an increasingly common method of settling disputes or seeking revenge.

Not long after I met the acid attack victim in 2008, I visited the Cambodian Acid Survivors Charity to photograph the survivors who were making a new life for themselves. Although horribly scarred, I found the women engaging, fun, and full of vitality.

A couple of days ago the NY Times published this piece on acid attack in Cambodia.

Click through the jump below for images from my visit in 2008.

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I’m typing on an Apple MacBook Pro while data backups are running in the background; gigabytes of images and video are flitting from Seagate to Lacie to Netgear hard drives. I have a Belkin router, a Comcast modem…I have all the accouterments of technology I need to capture content and publish in a digital world. What I don’t have is peace of mind.

I’ve spoken about and written about this before and, increasingly, so are many others. We are talking about conflict minerals, those metals essential to the electronics industry and our everyday conveniences. These metals also pay for ongoing war and sexual violence. As a consumer, I feel powerless to affect such a global issue. But, it is becoming easier to see how our role in the killing and what we can do to stop it. Like many things, it starts with transparency and accountability, through knowledge and conversation.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs, as reported by Wired, recently responded to a customer about conflict minerals in Apple products. The customer wrote:

“Are you currently making any effort to source conflict-free minerals? In particular, I’m concerned that Apple is getting tantalum, tungsten, tin, and gold from Eastern Congo through its suppliers.”

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Brian Storm posted this to his Twitter feed; my partner, Luciana, had mentioned it to me. And, because I talk about this when I give presentations (even pointing to my computer and holding up my iPhone), I thought it was worth a post all on its own.

Consumers–us–we buy products but many of us don’t ask our retailers to talk to the manufacturers to ask them to track their materials all the way down the supply chain, and to do so with a high level of transparency. That means, when we buy our electronics (or tomatoes or chocolate or…whatever) we often have no idea if slave labor, human trafficking, or war have tainted the products we buy.

It is a big challenge, but I believe corporations can hold their suppliers accountable, working with them to ensure there are viable and profitable options for them to supply conflict and slave-free materials for consumption. I believe the biggest part of the challenge is for consumers, like me and like you, to begin asking for this.

I wish I could point to my Mac and say “This is certified slave and conflict free.”

But I can’t. At least, not yet.

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Aaron Huey is a Seattle-based photographer with a personal project he’s documented for years. It is the story of the Lakota, a Sioux Indian tribe on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation. Recently, Huey gave a TEDx talk in Denver on his work, drawing parallels between the story of the Lakota and indigenous people around the world.

I wanted to re-post this TEDx talk on my blog out of respect for Huey’s work and commitment to following this story, to help him honor the journalist’s commitment to his or her subject–that being to tell their story–and for you to hear his TED wish.

This is a 15 minute video of his lecture. It is rich in imagery; I thought I could just listen while I worked on other stuff, but instead I found myself unable to look away. Take the time to view it, over morning coffee, lunch, or in the afternoon when you need a break from work. It is a powerful indictment of Manifest Destiny. Remember that from that your junior high US history class?

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Today the 2010 U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons report was published online. It’s a weighty tome (printed) and a sizable download (22mb). I am honored to be one of the few photographers contributing to this important report, with an image from my work on the Cambodian border (work I am currently seeking funding to continue).

The TIP Report evaluates every country in the world for its efforts in combating human trafficking. Most notably about this year’s report, it is the first time the United States has also evaluated itself. From the report:

Secretary Clinton (June 14, 2010): “The 10th annual Trafficking in Persons Report outlines the continuing challenges across the globe, including in the United States. The Report, for the first time, includes a ranking of the United States based on the same standards to which we hold other countries. The United States takes its first-ever ranking not as a reprieve but as a responsibility to strengthen global efforts against modern slavery, including those within America. This human rights abuse is universal, and no one should claim immunity from its reach or from the responsibility to confront it.”

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On Friday, June 25, I will be speaking at the opening reception for the exhibition “Our World at War” hosted by the International Committee of the Red Cross, Seattle Red Cross, and featuring images by photographers for the VII Photo Agency. Space is limited, so if you’d like to come to the opening please RSVP as soon as you can.

There are a series of lectures throughout the duration of the exhibition; you can find the exhibition lecture schedule here.

I will be speaking with VII photographer Christopher Morris and the Deputy Head of the ICRC Regional Delegation to the US and Canada, Martin de Boer, about the use of photojournalism in telling stories of war’s impacts. My talk will focus on the legacy of psychological trauma in post-conflict Cambodia.

Please come down, if not for the opening, then for any of the subsequent lectures or simply to see the photographs on from one of the leading editorial photo agencies in the world.

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It is with both pride and thanks that I recognize the publishing of my work by both duckrabbit and kobrechannel. Their acknowledgment increases traffic, views, and relevance of the work. The shout-out lets their audiences know this story exists and, because of the self selecting nature of the web, their viewers actually care about either the content or the method of storytelling. Mass market publications must have more content to appease vastly varying tastes; that means greater overhead for them and, for the viewer, more to sort through to find the content he or she is interested it. Judging by the ongoing collapse and fracturing of editorial publishing, the older, mass market method is no longer as relevant.

One can’t deny the power of social media, this interconnected, interactive, internet based existence. It leverages the decentralization of communication, allowing individuals to publish rich media, to shout the news into an electronic network connected to the eyes and ears of our audience, be it one or a million.

The ease of publishing means the internet is awash in content, some hyper local, some global, and a lot of it is simply “noise.” Rising over the chaos and clutter and distraction is difficult when attention spans are growing shorter and the bandwidth increasingly clogged. Lest we become wallflowers of the web, content generators must leverage social media, as a concept, tool, and methodology. We must honor its tenets of give and take, participation, contribution. We must build an existence from the comfort of our computer chair, creating an avatar for the cocktail party of the virtual world. The quality, and the quantity, of our relationships determine our popularity, our volume, our influence.

All that being said, what I am most grateful for is that Srey Neth has greater opportunity to be heard, to have an impact, and to make a difference. When she shared her story with me, I took on the responsibility of giving her voice farther reach. She wants the world to know that she is no longer captive of her experience; instead, she is using it to make a difference.

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