What is Free Photography?
Free Photography is a creative tool that assists and promotes positive change within individuals and their community networks.
Free Photography is a gift. By truly gifting the imagery to the people we are saying ‘you matter, we see you, you are here and we are here with you’. If we close our eyes for a second, imagine how powerful that message is, over and over again in every frame for years ahead.
How can photography make a difference?
Free Photography is not food or shelter, it is not counseling and rehabilitation. It does not seek those at their most vulnerable and is not a tool to use in the initial stages of crisis when other services are critical. Free Photography is right for people long after the newspapers, politicians and outreach has gone and once people are pushing through as independently as possible. I have found that at this point people are often bearing their personal weight of hardship silently, even if they have dedicated their efforts to help others. It is at this point that we should begin to see people once more for what they have been able to do.
Put simply, Free does not exploit peoples struggles. The pictures are there for the people to gift to others, which relieves some hardship, the pictures start conversations which relieves some loneliness, the pictures remind people they have come a long way, the pictures tell them that some people out there still care and that we are proud of them too. Their struggle in merely a frame within which to emphasize healing through photography.
Who receives Free Photography?
Photography provided free to those that never have the opportunity to afford it themselves, largely due to hardship, shows people that they are seen and heard. The images start conversations, like those you remember having around the dinner table as a kid, the type of conversations that uplift and encourage people.
In this era we are surrounded by picture making devices. Just about anyone can take a photo... however, something remarkable happens when individuals step in front of a professional camera. The excitement, vulnerability and courage is part of the journey toward them ‘seeing’ themselves through our eyes. I can not explain how this works exactly, it did happen to me too though and to the other people who’ve been apart of Free Photography thus far, once the imagery is given back to people there emerges a marker or page break, a fresh indicator on peoples scale of how well they are doing. Acknowledging the hurt and happiness go hand in hand to make these pictures some of the most powerful pictures people would own.
Why do you do it Jim?
In January 2005, immediately following the Boxing Day Tsunami I stood with an Australian Army Warrant Officer on the riverbank at Banda Aceh. He had a tear in his eye as he reached out and touched a framed photograph of a family that was missing. Someone had posted the photograph on the tree to help people out there looking for survivors should they recognise those in the picture. The feeling I had, taking the picture of that scene, was surreal... over the years to come that picture reminded me that the dead I saw, in tens of thousands, were alive and lived before that catastrophic event. And, no matter whether I was having a good day or a bad day then and the years following, that photograph of the family on the tree allowed me to start conversations with the Australian public, my family, the soldiers that were there with me... best of all it has begun this conversation with you.
