What Motivates Photojournalists... And Me!
Everyone has different reasons for wanting to achieve. Everyone perceives achievement in different ways. For me, achievement is being happy, pursuing a career that I enjoy, starting a family, and doing my best in everything I participate in along the way. The driving factor behind my motivation is my willingness to achieve. This is the motivation map I created based on what motivates me to achieve.
Based on this map I created I was inclined to compare my motivations to some photojournalists I researched. I want to know why they do what they do, why they think it important, and what motivates them to continue doing it. One photojournalist I researched is Peter Di Campo. He spends most of his time in Africa documenting what it is like to live there on a daily basis. One of his most recent works is a photo essay called “Everyday Africa.” Peter is very different compared to most people because he views the world differently. In an interview with “TIME Magazine” Peter says, “Why is it important? Look at where we are right now. The world today scares me, frankly – people, cultures refusing to understand each other, and the results are frightening, and it’s to the benefit of the people at the top to keep it that way. So I have to believe in a more diverse and inclusive media and I have to believe in the innovations that allow people to share their own stories with a wide audience.” Peter is motivated by his fear of the world. In his interview, he admits that the world is a scary place because of the unknown. He is driven to educate and culture the naive with his work. By doing that a goal of his is to create a more diverse media. Like Peter, I also think the world is a scary place, my motivations do not align with his simply because we have two different paths in life. Nonetheless, his motivations are admirable and if more people had similar motivations the world would be a different place. Stacey Pearsall was a military photographer that witness first hand how scary the world really was. After sustaining life-threatening injuries on the job, Stacey was let go by the military and did not recieve photography assignments anymore, so she began photographing for her own personal reasons. This leads to me introduce my next photographer.
Photo by: Peter Di Campo
The next photojournalist I researched was Alex Potter. “Her work explores conflict and trust, loss and isolation within communities and relationships. Alex aims to bridge the gap between the foreign and familiar by creating thought-provoking and emotional images,” says her personal website, alexkaypotter.com. Alex views photography and photojournalism different than Peter does. Where Peter views it as a way to change peoples’ perspectives, Alex does it for more personal reasons. In her interview with “TIME Magazine” Alex stated, “For me, photography is something I’ll always come back to, having assignments or not, to process my reality, to document the world around me, and to remember small details in difficult times that may have otherwise been forgotten.” What motivates Alex to take pictures is the fact that photos help her process what is going on around her. This is probably because photos have the ability to capture a specific moment, so she has the ability to reflect on those moments. Alex photographs because it gives her pleasure, like Stacey. Similarly to Alex, Lewis Line was able to document child labor, something that unless documented could be forgotten, by doing this he was able to make a change in the world.
Photo by: Alex Potter
The last photojournalist I researched was Laura Morton. Her point of view is similar to Peter Di Campo in that pictures have the ability to make changes to the world. She believes that pictures give people in the future to reflect on our time as well as gives people a better understanding of current times. Giving people those opportunities is what motivates her. When talking about her view on photojournalism she says, “I believe it’s incredibly important for photographers to document everyday life and even sometimes the seemingly mundane, not just for a better understanding of our times, but for individuals in the future to be able to reflect on who they are and how they got there. A photograph is particularly powerful because it is accessible to most of humanity.” Like Laura, a Mexico city photographer, Ruth Prieto Arenas tried to present people’s stories to create dialogue to try and develop solutions to social problems. She wanted to use her powerful pictures to help people reflect on what is happening in the world to effect change. My motivations coincide with Laura’s and Ruth’s because they have to do with creating change now to better my future.
Photo by: Laura Morton
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