ABOUT THE PROJECT
Advanced Documentary ProjectsA group photographic project is a huge undertaking. It is fraught with organizational issues, focus, personalities, direction and time. Lots of time is needed. This semester the students in the Advanced Documentary project class at the Graduate School of Journalism Berkeley attempted such an undertaking, the results are seen on these web pages.
Each photographer chose a subject that they could photograph during the semester. One student shot a video, which they have presented as frame grabs. The common thread was to be community.
Each week in class, we talked about other photographers who had worked in communities, Helen Levitt, Sebastiao Salgado, Josef Koudelka. Eugene Richards came to school and talked about his work. His photographs were exhibited for many months in our hallway gallery, giving each of the class members an opportunity to look at them over and over.
The work from their creative endeavor is contained on these web pages. Many lessons were learned and each essay represents a beginning at looking inside a community. Each photographer solved the issues of visually reporting differently, overcoming problems of access, technical problems and visual storytelling using a small number of images and limited text.
The combined record of their work, shows the viewer some part of the communities that surround the San Francisco Bay Area, and hopefully let us look deeper into these worlds in a way that only photography can do.
Ken Light
Lecturer, Graduate School of Journalism
University of California, BerkeleyKen Light's works can be viewed at http://www.kenlight.com
