2022 Visual Storytelling Summit

CatchLight hosted two immersive days of conversation, inspiration and community with some of the leading voices in visual storytelling. In our recordings from the Summit you can take a deeper dive into the work of CatchLight Global and Local Fellows. Hear from artists, founders, technologists and innovative creatives working at the nexus of art, media, journalism, technology and social impact. 

The work of these innovators was on display at the newly-unveiled ICA San Francisco. Recordings of each discussion will be recorded and available for viewing after the Summit.

State of Photography, Behind the Numbers: Survival in a Shifting Industry

As visuals become an increasingly important part of the global media diet, economic precarity has become commonplace for many photographers in the digital age—a key finding of both the State of Photo 2022 Report and the Visual Storyteller Field Survey, which led to the creation of the Photo Bill of Rights. What is behind this disparity, and how will image makers—including those in underrepresented groups—survive? Tara Pixley—an award-winning visual journalist, professor and co-founder of Authority Collective, an organization resourcing and amplifying women/nonbinary photographers of color—discusses these issues with CatchLight Global Fellow Daniella Zalcman, an multiple grantee documentary photographer and founder of Women Photograph, an organization which confronts the gender imbalance and inequities rampant in the photo industry.

Cultural Partners: Authority Collective, Women Photograph & The Knight Foundation

Photojournalism’s Ethical Question:
Who Gets to Tell a Community’s Story?

On view at San Francisco City Hall, the exhibition Care in the Time of COVID-19 is a collaborative project presented by San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries, the SF Public Library and CatchLight, presenting potent images of strength and connection in SF during the pandemic. Images of collective resilience, when presented in our most public civic forums, have the potential to impact policymakers and the most vulnerable among us. But who gets to tell these stories—and how? Working in the communities from which they come, CatchLight Local Fellows Yesica Prado and Felix Uribe alongside CatchLight Local California Visual Desk Editor Mabel Jiménez—in a conversation moderated by CatchLight Global Fellow Josué Rivas, Founder of INDÍGENA, Standing Strong Project and Co-Founder of Indigenous Photograph—dive into the nuances of how to work ethically and collaboratively in communities, particularly those that are disproportionately impacted by crisis. Visit the exhibition: Care in the Time of COVID-19, SF City Hall (lower level), Monday–Friday, 8am–4pm, free and open to the public.

Cultural Partners: San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC), INDÍGENA & Indigenous Photograph

Investing in Trusted Messengers: An Antidote to News Deserts

How can we harness the power of visual journalism to rebuild trust and fight misinformation—particularly in communities where there has been disinvestment in local news? In a conversation moderated by Jeremy Hay—a veteran California journalist who co-founded Spaceship Media in 2016 to support dialogue and engagement between communities at odds, reduce polarization and rebuild trust in media—CatchLight Global Fellow Andrea Bruce and CatchLight Local Fellow David Rodriguez Muñoz share their experiences working with overlooked communities, specifically North Carolina’s rural Pamlico County and California’s Monterey County, known for its lettuce fields and migrant farm labor. Whether through Bruce’s weekly bulletin Down in the County, or Rodriguez’ series Living in the Shadows in The Salinas Californian (featured in USC Annenberg’s Media Impact Report), these visual storytellers demonstrate the power of the image to impact the lives, now seen. 

Cultural Partner: The Salinas Californian

Unveiling Histories & Creating Movements

During the second Harlem Renaissance, Kwame Brathwaite used photography to fuel the Black Is Beautiful movement. Director of the Kwame Brathwaite Archive, Aperture Board Member and son of Brathwaite, Kwame S. Brathwaite’s labor of archiving reflects his continued commitment to Black freedom. Harlem-based Global Fellow Bayeté Ross Smith pushes forward this critical conversation about representation, cultural amnesia, and its ripple effects through time. His Red Summers—a series of 360 Virtual Reality videos published in The Guardian recount our nation’s history of domestic terrorism and racial violence, examining how these events directly impacted the social, political and economic trajectory of America throughout the rest of the 20th century. Ross Smith and Brathwaite discuss the significance of preserving legacies—both joyous and tragic, personal and communal—and multi-platform storytelling’s critical role in ensuring visual, historical and cultural literacy.

Cultural Partner: Aperture

Africa’s Emerging Talent: Cultivating the Next Generation of Storytellers

The inaugural Africa Foto Fair Virtual, an extension of the Addis Foto Fest Aida Muluneh founded, launches April 21—highlighting emerging talent from Africa. Muluneh joins us from Abidjan, to speak to the importance of cultivating the next generation of storytellers—and how creating a virtual way of disseminating creative content, educational information, resources and databases, and how it can bring together a global audience. Muluneh, a globally celebrated photographer who has exhibited internationally at institutions including MoMA, is also known for her curation of Crossroads Ethiopia for the Nobel Peace Center that featured archival work from the Addis Foto Fest. Her generosity of spirit and deep commitment to improving the field of visual storytelling through leadership, knowledge-sharing and innovation, has also led her to conduct workshops in Uganda, Ethiopia, Côte d’Ivoire and Italy to support the next generation of visual storytellers. She will discuss how creating a virtual way of disseminating creative content, educational information, resources and databases, can bring together a global audience.

Cultural Partners: Addis Foto Fest & Africa Foto Fair Virtual

VISUALS & TRUST in WEB3

Recent advances in the internet’s architecture have the potential to change the way we capture, store and verify photographs. How will this impact the way we create, experience, authenticate, and protect visual narratives? How do we shape the future, rather than being shaped by it? Starling Initiative Cofounder Jonathan Dotan, a Fellow at Stanford’s Center for Blockchain Research and the Stanford Compression Forum—and writer and producer of HBO’s Emmy Award-winning series Silicon Valley—with deep expertise in applied strategy and policy for the decentralized web, will discuss the future of photojournalism in Web3.

Cultural Partner: The Starling Lab for Data Integrity – Stanford + USC

Family Matters: Healing the Divide, Individually & Collectively

For the last two decades, American artist Gillian Laub has used the camera to investigate how society’s most complex questions reveal themselves in our most intimate relationships. Across political and social divides, can visual language help us find common ground? Laub speaks about her focus on family, community, and human rights, and what she has learned throughout projects such as Testimony (2007), which explores the lives of terror survivors in the Middle East; Southern Rites (2015), a decade-long project about racism in the American South; and her career-spanning work privately documenting the emotional, psychological and political landscape of her own family as a microcosm of a deeply conflicted nation. In her recent monograph Family Matters, published by Aperture, Laub documents her experience finding her parents and herself on opposing sides of a sharp political divide—threatening to fracture the family. It forces everyone to ask what, in the end, really binds us together?

Cultural Partner: Aperture

Confronting Representation in Visual Media: What Does it Mean to be an Image Gardener?

In conjunction with the exhibition Image Gardeners, curated by Sara Wessen Chang at McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, featuring portrait photography by women and non-binary makers that reframes dominant conventions of representation, CatchLight Global Fellow Daniella Zalcman joins artists Marcel Pardo Ariza and Chanell Stone in a discussion with the curator about how we can cultivate a broader lens for our collective visual storytelling. Together they explore how we authentically nurture new visions of the self and challenge our collective understanding of how identity is constructed, communicated and perceived.

Cultural Partners: McEvoy Foundation for the Arts & Women Photograph

Summit Public Art Sponsors

Pamela & David Hornik