Photographs have always struck me as a strikingly effective way to provoke people on certain issues. Words can sometimes do the trick, but nothing tugs at your heart like a photograph where you can actually see an issue through the pain in a human face.
Kobre showcases several great issue centered photo stories that clearly demonstrate the potential these kinds of projects can have for exposing issues and bringing about change. One of my favorites is Judy Griesedieck’s “California’s Nursing Homes: No Place to Die” where she exposed some of the horrors going on in these establishments through a series of photos that were published in San Jose’s Mercury News. The pictures were all very simple but also very telling. One of the shots that showcased in Kobre’s book that left the biggest impression of me was that of a nursing home resident asleep in a chair in an empty hall way neglected and unattended, her neck hanging over the side of the chair. This photo story also exhibited the importance of looking at more than one side of the story, something that has often been argued photojournalism projects are unable to do. In addition to showing the negative occurrences at these nursing homes, Griesedieck also incorporated photographs that showed the caring personnel in the homes.
This example also does a great job of delineating some of the struggles a reporter and/or photojournalist might face in gaining access to issue stories, where people might be highly sensitive and defensive of anything that puts an establishment in a bad light. Griesedieck’s work shows that difficulty gaining the access is not a reason to forgo an issue story, only more reason to pursue it and get out the truth to the public so that some change might come from it. A photograph truly is worth a 1,000 words.
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