EXPERIMENTING WITH Collaborative story, Participatory Media, and Community Engagement
Zefanias “Jeff” Joel Zango discusses why he made some of the images he made during a Listening Session attended by about 40 of his fellow fishermen in Závora, Mozambique. In collaboration with Rare. (photo: Brian Ullmann/Rare)
We are all one. We are all connected. In the ancient indigenous sense but also now in a more practical and ecological way than ever before. The “Resources” we all rely on are no longer tribal. They’re global. And the Western Industrial world has proven itself unable to manage a healthy balance, and the knowledge it leads with is incomplete and harmful in its omissions. This must change. The stories that define our relationships with each other and this planet can no longer come just from the dominant “taking” culture. Those who live closest to, rely most intimately on, and strive most passionately for balance in the communities of people and nature that sustain us all must be included as equals in the conversation.
We have spent our whole careers in magazines, documentary film, and photojournalism and have seen many examples of inequitable, extractive, and as a result, harmful storytelling done on behalf of the people and communities being featured. And, unfortunately, these outside perspectives dominate and define how most of us learn about these places.
A Facebook post on the community group page after our final exhibition of the Klemtu’s youth’s photographs. When a photography exhibit becomes more interesting than video games, you know you’re on to something.
The STORY COLLABORATIVE™ process prioritizes listening to local communities, helping to dismantle the dangerous “Savior vs. Saved” hierarchy. It rebalances authorship and representation so we can all learn from each others’ wisdom—instead of about it—as we work toward the healing of all people and the planet.
These collaborations are not typical photography workshops. We are not teaching photography or how to be a photographer. We are simply providing the tools, essential technical support, and a framework designed to facilitate the creation and sharing of meaningful stories, promoting photography as a means of self-expression and catalyst for community conversations, and making space to honor the community’s voices in our broader conversations. It is important to note that we prompt and direct the Photographers as little as possible, scheduling only a few essential meetings. Photography and basic visual literacy is now ubiquitous and no longer the exclusive domain of professionals or the technically trained. This process embraces this new common baseline and democratizing reality to witness the Photographers making the photographs they want to make, in the ways that they want to make them, to say with them what they want to say.
The work with Klemtu was written up by The Nature Conservancy and featured in print and online in Photo District News and you can download a general article I wrote for Impact magazine here.
An article in WWF’s World Wildlife featuring the work of four members of the OglalaLakota Nation.
By its nature and by design, each project is unique to the communities involved and so our process is also always evolving. Recent projects include one focused on traditional participatory photography combined with communications skills development with youth in the First Nations community of Klemtu, B.C. on the pacific coast of Canada; one designed around community engagement with fishermen in the small coastal village of Závora in southern Mozambique as part of a larger user-centered design process; another focused on team learning with an international group of fisheries program managers in the Philippines using photography as an onsite learning tool; as the Colorado State Facilitator for Working Assumptions Foundations WRKxFMLY Project in schools across Colorado; remotely with Native communities in the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Indian Reservations in South Dakota addressing food security and cultural heritage as a way of keeping vital programs alive during the pandemic; celebrating a flagship marine protected area in Palawan Philippines; exploring the importance of mangroves in Yucatan, Mexico. Upcoming projects include two with Indigenous communities in the upper Amazon in southeastern Peru and two in Africa exploring wildlife conservation in Namibia and forest-based livelihoods in Madagascar.
Zefanias “Jeff” Joel Zango in Zavora, Mozambique photographing a women’s savings group meeting.
Working with First Nation’s Youth in Klemtu, Canada, on a participatory photography and storytelling summer workshop through The Nature Conservancy. (photo: Melissa Dale/TNC)
I have been a ‘Concerned Photographer’—a term coined in the 1960’s by International Center of Photography (ICP) founder Cornell Cappa to describe “photographers who demonstrate in their work a humanitarian impulse to use pictures to educate and change the world, not just to record it”—for my entire career. And for the last decade, I have focused exclusively on projects exploring how we live on the planet and with each other, and almost always in ignored, under-represented, or under-served communities. Breaking down the barriers between photographer and subject and recognizing how much even more powerful photography can be when we listen to, learn from, and collaborate with each other, is the logical next step for me in making sure the work I do is beginning to proactively address diversity, equity, access, inclusion, and justice.