What’s in the article

• The political side of photography
• How to use photography to stand up for democracy
• How images can find facts
• The importance of empathy and questions and how they can inform your photography. 
• Other important things to keep in mind for making images. 

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Making photos can be challenging when you’re living in an environment with an unprecedented political and partisan divide. And making images that transcend party lines requires its own special technique. 

Andrea Bruce, a freelance photographer, visited the 2022 Alaska Press Conference to share her insights on making images in a divided political landscape. 

The political side of it all

Bruce’s first step is to acknowledge the fact that we live in a divided environment, and to understand what that means. One important thing to note with that in mind is that people do not ONLY exist among party lines; a person could lean conservative on one issue but then be more liberal on another. Socio-political divide is part of how people understand democracy.

“I found many counter-narratives to a lot of cliches,” Bruce said. “For example in ‘Trump country’ many people were actually Democrats, which I found surprising because a lot of people were Union people. In North Carolina, I followed NRA-supporting hunters, conservatives but not in every vein. They are very traditional environmentalists close to nature and they believe in the climate change that has affected their coastal community deeply.”

While it’s important to acknowledge this in the macro, it’s important to not acknowledge it in the microscopic parts of making a story with pictures. In fact, you should try to bring politics out of it and focus on the story.

How to stand up for democracy

With this in mind, part of journalism (in this context photojournalism, but it’s important to print journalism as well) is focusing on informing the public in a way that stands up for democracy. And images are one way to cut through the noise. 

“I found asking, ‘What does democracy mean to you?’ requires a deep understanding of people in these photos,” Bruce said, while going over her photo of a mother outside an RV with her child. “In this way the project attempts to bridge today’s deep political divide.”

Fact finding

Now that we’ve acknowledged the broad divide, we also need to acknowledge the ethical concept that honesty is one of the best ways to tell stories through photos. 

When taking photos, it may also be important to have someone local to the environment you’re reporting on to help out with the project. 

While some stories may appear small and insignificant, it’s important to show as many of the stories out there as possible, in a divided country. Showcasing smaller stories helps cut through divisiveness. 

Bruce explained how photography can enact positive change. She shared an example of an unsettling picture of a child who froze to death.

“The reaction to it was really intense, the Afghan government, the US military, aid organizations, and individual people all took action to help the displaced,” she said. 

The importance of empathy and questions

Not as important as fact finding (but still VERY important) is empathy. Empathy is one of the keys to the work created, as it freezes a very real, human moment in time forever. 

With this in mind, getting people to look and ask questions with this empathy is necessary in order to learn and survive as a country and as humans. 

And with empathy (and a practice of caring about another’s experience in general) it is important to remind ourselves that people can’t care about a person from another culture or background if they don’t relate to them in some way or another. And an important key to that relating is through human connection through images. 

Bruce said photography in general is just one of many chances for people to see a mirror of themselves; in a situation or in another person. 

These are just some of the insights shared by Andrea Bruce at the 2022 Alaska Press Conference. You can check out the full recording and see slides of his presentation here. 

Written by Logan Tyler Smith