Women in Photojournalism: Donna Ferrato

Donna Ferrato


An assignment for the New York Times Magazine on child rape in South Africa, 1998, Donna Ferrato
Women in Photojournalism
By REID GUEMMER 

Donna Ferrato, a photojournalist known for her coverage of domestic violence, has worked for a great deal of new sources such as The New York Times, Time and People. In her photographs, Ferrato focuses on illuminating the darker sides of humanity. What is so unique about her work is that she captures issues that people are reluctant to discuss. Taking on both freelance and commissioned assignments, Ferrato's work provokes thought on human interactions.

Ferrato not only photographs images that bring awareness to issues such as rape and abuse, but she consistently works with various companies to help eliminate these issues from society. These issues are hard to photograph without showing scaring and violent images, although Ferrato uses human emotion to show the detrimental effects of matters such as sexual assault and abuse. In a assignment for the New York Times Magazine, Ferrato did a series on child rape in South Africa. In this series, rather than finding a way to show the gruesome acts, Ferrato shows the human reactions to moments revolving to sexual assault. I believe this is what photojournalism should be, a portrayal of raw human emotion in reaction to all wonderful, difficult and challenging moments in life.
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Women in Photojournalism: Hansel Mieth

Hansel Mieth
Hansel Meith, Untitled, 1963 
Women in Photojournalism
By REID GUEMMER

Hansel Mieth fully dedicated her life to her profession. When photographing on site, Mieth and her crew would live among the issues in order to capture the most raw and telling images. Mieth once said "To be a good photographer you must feel what people feel when they're down." Her extreme commitment to battling social and political issues in the United States resulted in great contributions in documentary style films and photojournalism. Mieth achieved her primary goal of showing the world injustices through the lens of her camera.

In 1937 Meith was made executive editor at LIFE magazine, making her the second female photographer on staff. For this reason, Mieth felt a great deal of discrimination and restrictions against her work and creativity. She was given demeaning assignments, her work was often censored and in many cases the work she was assigned did not get published. Meith had originally been hesitant to take the job in the first place because of these reasons and potentially undermining her beliefs to work for corporate America. Although despite this, Meith was able to use LIFE as a platform to reach thousands of people and display to the strength of human spirit. 
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Women in Photojournalism: Hillary with Ice Cream in Hand

Diana Walker
Diana Walker, With an ice cream cone in hand, Hillary waves to the crowd in Weedsport, New York, as she heads to the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged in Auburn, New York, One of the stops on her Save America's Treasures tour,  July 14, 1998, 
Women in Photojournalism
By REID GUEMMER 

Diana Walker provides America with images of behind the scenes and in between moments of politics. Walker worked as TIME Magazine's White House photographer for over twenty years covering numerous presidencies with subtly. Her greatest technique in capturing these unique moments is credited to the detachment. In the same moment, she somehow creates an unspoken relationship with the subject as well. In other words, Walker does everything she can to make herself invisible in order to capture the raw, detailed moments.

Walker had a particularly unique relationship with Hillary Clinton. She had the opportunity to photograph her over a period of twenty years, as Hillary transitioned from first lady to secretary f state and everything in between. Since the span of Hillary and Walker's time together was so large the level of comfort between the two reached a point where Walker could capture exactly the types of images she wanted, the natural and candid moments. The image above is a perfect example and one I find particularly powerful. Ice cream cone in hand, Hillary waves to a crowd. 

Like many of her female colleagues, Walker felt that she faced gender discrimination in the news field. In an interview she discussed this saying, "I've always felt that I got a really good shake from the women picture editors in New York who thought it time for another woman in their ranks. In some ways being female gave me a leg up; in other ways, male chauvinism reared its ugly head." For this reason, I feel that Walker's relationship with Hillary has allowed her to capture such amazing moments in her career. Working along side each other, the two heavily promote equal opportunities for women and succeed at making strides that push the system with this in interest.

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Women in Photojournalism: Displaced

Displaced
Malin Fezehai, Displaced, on going 2007-present

Women in Photojournalism
BY REID GUEMMER

Malin Fezehai began her career in Sweden, her home country. After attending school in New York City for film and photography, Fezehai began her career as a photojournalist. She spends much of her time traveling the middle east, Africa, Europe and America capturing images of displacement. 

In an on-going series, Malin Fezehai studies modern migration and displacement around the world. For the first time since world war II over fifty million people have been forced to flee their homes due to climate change, wars, natural disasters, food and water scarcity, and internal conflict. In many cases multiple of these factors play a part. 

In 2010 a massive magnitude 7 earth quake devastated Haiti. The earthquake caused an especial amount of damage to Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince. It's estimated that nearly three million people were affected by the earthquake, including aftershocks. In the first image, taken in 2012, a collection of wife-beaters hang down from a close line. On the horizon are a collection of houses and buildings in Port-au-Prince still in need of repairs. 

Women make up 50 percent of refugees. In many cases, these women often end up being abused or sexually assaulted after or during the escape of the countries they are fleeing. The following two images are women in UNHCR camps (the UN against sexual violence in conflict), an organization that raises awareness to these issues and works with displaced women and girls. Their primary goal is to help bring an end to sexual violence and make the world a safer, more nurturing environment for girls and women. 
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Women in Photojournalism: Nepal

Maggie Steber

Maggie Steber, Nepal, 2000
Women in Photojournalism
By REID GUEMMER

It’s no secret photojournalism is a field largely dominated by men. The job demands a lot but both physically and mentally from the professional, and knowingly placing workers in harm's way to capture a shot creates even more of a gender bias. Typically, companies assume a male is more fit to take on the job for this reason. In the next five blog posts I plan to highlight women in the photojournalism field and their accomplishments as well as the ways in which they broke gender stereotypes, along with the stories behind the images they’ve captured. 

During Maggie Steber's career as a photographer she has focused on capturing humanitarian and social issues. Working in over 64 countries, Steber has decades of experience in the field and her work has been published in both National Geographic and The New York Times. Reaching such a successful point in her career was nothing short of difficult. Facing multiple accounts of sexual harassment, Steber refused to succumb to the pressure of men in the field and persevered with resistance to become a highly respected artist in the field of photojournalism. In an interview Steber addressed sex related to her career saying, “Clearly I’m a woman,” she continued, “But I think of myself as a photographer who just happens to be a woman. How my gender shapes my views is important and cannot be denied, but I just feel like it’s stating the obvious and sets women up in a male-dominated business, still to this day, as ‘them and us.'"

This interview really resonated with me and is the premise for the following series of posts addressing women working in the field of photojournalism. 

Nepal has one of the highest rates of blindness. In the image above, a nearly blind man peers through a pair of broken glasses while waiting to receive cataract surgery in a newly established clinic. Steber recalls hundreds of people lining to receive the surgery that Dr. Ruit, a leading surgeon at the clinic, has perfected in two simple incisions.
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