Support Photojournalism

Curator: Paul Bellinger Jr.
Ukraine Guide 1
Ukraine Gude 2
Ukraine Guide 3

Heidi: Along with giving agency to the local and relevant photographers, how and why did these guides come about?
Paul: Well the purpose of my instagram account @support.photojournalism is to promote the work of photojournalists, documentary and street photographers from around the world and to strengthen our community as photographers. These photographers are generally over worked and under paid so my goal is to spread appreciation for the important work they do. I try to set a good example of being generous on Instagram: sharing, reposting, saving, liking, commenting, all the little things I can do for free to uplift photographers. I repost about 10-15 posts a day on Instagram stories, all from photojournalists, documentary and street photographers. I’ve been doing it for about a year and half now. I’ve gotten to know our community really well and we have photographers from around the world. When events happen, I usually see the pictures on Instagram before they are published anywhere else.

How are you leveraging Instagram tools?
When Instagram rolled out the guides feature (basically a self contained, numbered list, made up of Instagram posts, with text fields for a title and a caption) I started using it right away because one of the options is to make a guide from your saved posts. I was already saving around 250+ posts a week to consider for reposting on stories so I had the idea to make a weekly guide of what I thought were the best posts of the week. Instagram limits guides to 30 posts, so it’s basically a roundup of my 30 favorites from the week called “Weekly Faves.” It’s very easy to share a guide on your instagram story so this gives people a really easy way to share the work of 30 photographers in just a couple taps on their phone. Hopefully when people see the guide they click through and follow the photographers and start engaging with them.

Tell us about your Weekly Faves
I’ve never said it out loud, but in my mind these Weekly Faves are kind of an alternative to the “Photos of the Week” slideshows that most major publications do. I say alternative, because of course I have my own subjective ideas about what makes a good picture or story, but also because I’m not limited to photographers that work only for one agency or another, or one publication or another, or even limited to pictures that have been published anywhere besides Instagram. My Weekly Faves also differs in content because I mostly follow independent photographers. It gives me a reason to look back at the previous week and be a little more considerate. I’m always in awe of how much amazing work is posted each week from our community. It’s really hard to only pick 30.

How did the Ukraine guide come about?
Making the Ukraine guides came on kind of a late night delirium actually. I could barely keep my eyes open after listening to coverage on TV and scouring Instagram for hours on the day that Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine. I knew several photographers on the ground in the weeks and months leading up to the invasion and they had already started posting work from the invasion. I was reposting their work and they were reposting the work of other colleagues on the ground. I knew we were about to see an avalanche of posts and I wouldn’t be able to keep up reposting all of it. So before I passed out with my phone in my hand around 3am, I had the idea to use Instagram guides to make a list of all the photographers I knew working in Ukraine, and then I’d just post that guide on my story and people could go follow all of those photographers and keep up with what was happening in Ukraine on their own. The community did the rest, sharing the guide generously and sending me messages with more photographers that were in Ukraine, especially Ukrainian photographers. I updated it with new photographers and it quickly reached the 30 post limit for guides. By then, it had already started going viral thanks to our community for being so supportive of their colleagues on the ground in Ukraine.

What is the intended goal of the guides and are they acting like an agency of sorts, or is this more of a grassroots collective?
The immediate goal was to provide a resource for spreading reliable information from Ukraine. I want @support.photojournalism to be useful to the people who follow it, helping them stay informed about what’s going on across the world. There is a lot of misinformation out there. Photojournalists provide the antidote to misinformation. I want people to be able to get their information straight from the photographers themselves, including photographers who are from Ukraine. I believe in the power of pictures to show the world through another’s eyes. Pictures share different perspectives on what’s happening. In order to make a picture, the photographer has to be there, on the ground, bearing witness to whatever is in front of them and that gives pictures an element of persuasion that few other mediums have.

I also wanted to let everyone within our community know who was already on the ground so we could all start promoting their work and hopefully they could get their work licensed, published etc., so they can earn a living and be able to keep going. We really need to pay photojournalists more so they can focus on making pictures and not worrying about how they’re going to make ends meet or cutting corners on their health and safety. If nothing else, I hope we got their work some love and it lifted the photographers spirits during difficult times.

But the broader goal is always the same: to promote photojournalism, documentary and street photography, and to build community. These photographers put their lives on the line to cover dangerous situations and inform the public about what’s happening in the world. To me they’re like rock stars, or better yet, super heroes. They play a very crucial role in our society but they’re under appreciated today. They work hard to make amazing pictures under the toughest conditions so I think the least we can do is thank them for their service to society and spread the love for their work.

Lastly, as photographers we’re stronger together. We can use social media to promote each other and the stronger our community is, the better off each individual photographer will be. Individually we may only be able to reach a few thousand people, but together we can reach millions. So I try to use social media to connect photographers and foster a community of lifting each other up, sharing each other’s work. I also host a weekly audio-chat room on Clubhouse for all of us to get together and talk about anything and everything photography related. Hearing each other’s voices on Clubhouse has helped us become closer friends over the last year and many of us have met up in person as well. Our core group is very strong now and we all help each other and our community however we can.

I saw you held a 2 hr conversation on Clubhouse, what were the most salient points from the discussion?
We have a weekly audio-chat room on Clubhouse every Tuesday at 5pm PST (Wednesday mornings on the other side of the world). We talk about all things photojournalism, documentary and street photography. Every week we are joined by some of the leading photographers today, along with editors, photography students and non-photographers who want to learn from the discussion and ask questions. It’s very casual and everyone is welcome. We usually go for two hours and people come and go as they can. Last week we had Nicoló Filipo Rosso stop by after he had just won a staggering four awards at the Pictures of the Year International (POYi), one of the most prestigious awards in our industry. The previous week we were joined by Gabrielle Lurie, who had just won back to back Photographer of the Year in a Small Market along with three other awards at POYi (she might be the only person to have ever won back to back years like that). Natalie Behring and Raquel Natalicchio co-moderate it with me and they are both outstanding photographers too.

How do people get involved?
For Ukraine I’ll defer to Ukrainians who know best. Marta Iwanek  has been sharing a lot of useful information and has helped me with the guides so I would start by following her. For our community, the best way is to follow along on Instagram and you’ll always be informed about what’s happening with us. I use Instagram stories to share the work of many photographers everyday, so I would love it if people go follow those photographers and show them some love by liking and sharing their work and supporting them financially when they can. People can come to our Clubhouse room to learn more about the people behind the pictures. There are several photography organizations that do good work for photographers that people can donate to such as Women Photograph, Diversify Photo and Black Women Photographers. I highly recommend people in the US to join or donate to the National Press Photographers Association because they do a lot specifically for photojournalists. Beyond that, subscribe to a newspaper or magazine or buy a photo book.

The first piece of what is considered modern journalism was published in 1703 by Daniel Dafoe, (Great Storm of 1703 in Britain) 317 years later we have the same need for journalism, but why is this even more important now?
I think it’s more important than ever now. Democracy and journalism are co-dependent so the erosion of journalism also erodes democracy. Journalism is essential to democracy because it informs the public, a necessary precondition for holding leaders accountable which is really the essence of democracy. Funding for journalism has been in decline for a long time now, with newsrooms and bureaus closing at an accelerating pace in the 2000s. I think we’re starting to see the political consequences as data show that democracy is weakening around the world for the last several years.  It’s impossible to know to what extent, but I think it’s pretty safe to say that strengthening journalism will strengthen democracy along with it, so it’s more important now than ever.

What are the benefits of the smaller footprint photography has over video, aside from speed and isolating a single moment?
When it comes to making pictures or videos, there are some practical advantages for photography in that it requires less/smaller gear, less storage, less computing power, editing time, etc. Video cameras are getting smaller and smaller though and many photographers make video with their cameras now too. But yeah if you have a smaller footprint then you can be a little more nimble and get into more situations.

When it comes to the output, photography and video are similar in their believability. When people see video or picture evidence of something, they tend to believe it because they know the person who made it was actually there. They’re both important and effective at visual communication and have their strengths and weaknesses. One benefit of still photography is that it can be printed and widely disseminated in print. Once printed it’s permanent and it doesn’t require electricity or internet to look at it. Through newspapers, magazines and books the still image has further reach and more staying power than video. Even when you’re looking on a phone, a still picture takes less time to look at. It has immediate impact. I think that’s another benefit of still photography in an age where the average attention span is extremely short. I have a lot of respect for video too though, ideally we’d have both and a lot of people in our community do both.

This global network of photo journalism provides a POV and firm ground for objectivity and lived experience. How has social media opened the aperture for creators to share their images free of traditional media institutions.
I believe one of the goals for journalism should be to provide as many perspectives as possible. Social media has given us access to more points of view than ever before, so it has had a democratizing effect on the images that are being made and seen. The types of stories we have access to now is unprecedented. Our ability to find talented photographers anywhere in the world through social media is really incredible for telling stories with more nuance. You’re right, many of these stories might not have ever made it through that institutional shaping you’re talking about with the major publications out there. Social media has removed the gate keepers, to an extent. But the gap between the work that is being made and the work that is being published by these institutions is still massive, and these institutions still have enormous reach, far more than individual photographers. It’s a double edged sword, photographers can reach more people than ever but their chances of being paid a reasonable wage are lower than ever too. So there are many more pictures out there today but there are also many more unpaid photographers out there now too.

Can you speak to your personal connection to journalism?
My mentor was a photojournalist. I know a lot of photojournalists and I’ve studied the work of many of the great photojournalists in history, so I would say I’m an admirer. I don’t call myself a journalist, only a photographer. I’ve done a few journalism assignments over the years but it’s not my career. I’m connected to it now as a freelance photo editor, curator, and community builder.

To connect with Paul please email him at paulbellinger@gmail.com