Visually Speaking: Contemporary Photojournalism in America, Volume 2
Have you ever wondered how a news photographer knows when to be in a specific place? Or how they get the insight to create such moving images that tell the story of critical transformations? The answers to these questions and others will be explored by seasoned photographer/curator James Estrin, co-editor of The New York Times Lens blog, as he leads a conversation with some of today’s greatest photojournalists.
Photographers Michelle Agins and Joshua Lott will help Estrin dissect visual culture in an era wrought with ever-changing and, oftentimes, mind-boggling scenarios across America.
Joshua Lott is a photojournalist based in Chicago, Illinois. He is a regular contributor to The New York Times, Reuters, Getty Images, Agence France Presse and The Washington Post. His work has appeared in Time, Newsweek and Politico. He has a passion for documenting politics dating back a decade, when he started covering news assignments in his hometown of Chicago. Leading up to the 2008 presidential election, he spent nine months in Iowa and later covered the campaigns in South Carolina, Florida and Wisconsin. Between 2009 and 2013, he was based in Phoenix, Arizona, out of which he covered Arizona's immigration crackdown, the Mexican border, wildfires and the Tucson shooting. As the nation has turned its attention to Detroit in the wake of its bankruptcy, Lott has covered news assignments out of the city for over a year. He is available for assignments around the country.
In 1977, Michelle Agins became a photographer and audio-visual specialist for the City of Chicago's Department of Human Services and in 1983 she switched to the mayor's press office where she became the mayor's office photographer, a position she held until 1987 when she joined The Charlotte Observer. Ms. Agins' photographs have been widely exhibited. In 1981, in Chicago, she received the Mayor's Award for Photographic Excellence and staged a one-woman show titled "I Saw You." She exhibited in a show titled "Faces" at the 1987 National Black Journalists Conference in Miami, and in 1990 the New York Association of Black Journalists and the New York Associated Press awarded her citations. Ms. Agins has received two Pulitzer Prize nominations, first in 1990 for her coverage of the Bensonhust protests and then again in 1995 for her work on the Times series “Another America: Life on 129th Street.” In 2001 Ms. Agins and her colleagues won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for their series “How Race is Lived in America.”
James Estrin is a New York Times senior staff photographer and a founder of Lens, The New York Times' photography blog. Estrin was part of a team that won a 2001 Pulitzer Prize for a national series of articles entitled “How Race Is Lived In America." He is also the co-executive producer of the documentary film "Underfire: The Untold Story of Pfc. Tony Vaccaro" which appeared on HBO in November 2016. In 1981, Estrin became a staff photographer for the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, MS. where he worked for the next two years. He then freelanced in New York City for the city's major newspapers including Newsday, The New York Post and The New York Daily News. He began freelancing for The New York Times in 1987 and joined the Times staff in 1992. Estrin has photographed in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza in 1993, 1998 and again in 2002. In 2004, he was the first journalist to photograph an assisted suicide in Oregon, a multimedia story for which he photographed, produced audio and wrote articles. In 2010, he traveled to Haiti to document the aftermath of the earthquake there. In 2014, he was the subject of the documentary feature “Behind the Lens with Photographer James Estrin” produced by the Oprah Winfrey Network. The piece focused on a series of Estrin's photos that explored the spiritual experience. The photos were also the subject of a solo exhibition of Estrin's work mounted by the 92nd Street Y in New York earlier that year. One year after the collapse of the World Trade Center, Estrin took the iconic photo of the World Trade Center Memorial in which a swirl of dust enfolds a circle of survivors at Ground Zero. It was “as if there were spirits on the ground there,” he recalled.
Visually Speaking is made possible in part through Brooklyn Public Library’s Fund for the Humanities, established through the generous support of the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Hearst Foundation, Inc., Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Starr Foundation, Leon and Muriel Gilbert Charitable Trust, Henry and Lucy Moses Fund, Inc., and a gift in memory of Samuel and Pauline Wine. Additional funding was provided through the generosity of an anonymous donor.
Have you ever wondered how a news photographer knows when to be in a specific place? Or how they get the insight to create such moving images that tell the story of critical transformations? The answers to these questions and others will be explored by seasoned photographer/curator James Estrin, co-editor of The New York Times Lens blog, as he leads a conversation with some of today’s greatest photojournalists.
Photographers Michelle Agins and Joshua Lott will help Estrin dissect visual culture in an era wrought with ever-changing and, oftentimes, mind-boggling scenarios across America.
Joshua Lott is a photojournalist based in Chicago, Illinois. He is a regular contributor to The New York Times, Reuters, Getty Images, Agence France Presse and The Washington Post. His work has appeared in Time, Newsweek and Politico. He has a passion for documenting politics dating back a decade, when he started covering news assignments in his hometown of Chicago. Leading up to the 2008 presidential election, he spent nine months in Iowa and later covered the campaigns in South Carolina, Florida and Wisconsin. Between 2009 and 2013, he was based in Phoenix, Arizona, out of which he covered Arizona's immigration crackdown, the Mexican border, wildfires and the Tucson shooting. As the nation has turned its attention to Detroit in the wake of its bankruptcy, Lott has covered news assignments out of the city for over a year. He is available for assignments around the country.
In 1977, Michelle Agins became a photographer and audio-visual specialist for the City of Chicago's Department of Human Services and in 1983 she switched to the mayor's press office where she became the mayor's office photographer, a position she held until 1987 when she joined The Charlotte Observer. Ms. Agins' photographs have been widely exhibited. In 1981, in Chicago, she received the Mayor's Award for Photographic Excellence and staged a one-woman show titled "I Saw You." She exhibited in a show titled "Faces" at the 1987 National Black Journalists Conference in Miami, and in 1990 the New York Association of Black Journalists and the New York Associated Press awarded her citations. Ms. Agins has received two Pulitzer Prize nominations, first in 1990 for her coverage of the Bensonhust protests and then again in 1995 for her work on the Times series “Another America: Life on 129th Street.” In 2001 Ms. Agins and her colleagues won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for their series “How Race is Lived in America.”
James Estrin is a New York Times senior staff photographer and a founder of Lens, The New York Times' photography blog. Estrin was part of a team that won a 2001 Pulitzer Prize for a national series of articles entitled “How Race Is Lived In America." He is also the co-executive producer of the documentary film "Underfire: The Untold Story of Pfc. Tony Vaccaro" which appeared on HBO in November 2016. In 1981, Estrin became a staff photographer for the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, MS. where he worked for the next two years. He then freelanced in New York City for the city's major newspapers including Newsday, The New York Post and The New York Daily News. He began freelancing for The New York Times in 1987 and joined the Times staff in 1992. Estrin has photographed in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza in 1993, 1998 and again in 2002. In 2004, he was the first journalist to photograph an assisted suicide in Oregon, a multimedia story for which he photographed, produced audio and wrote articles. In 2010, he traveled to Haiti to document the aftermath of the earthquake there. In 2014, he was the subject of the documentary feature “Behind the Lens with Photographer James Estrin” produced by the Oprah Winfrey Network. The piece focused on a series of Estrin's photos that explored the spiritual experience. The photos were also the subject of a solo exhibition of Estrin's work mounted by the 92nd Street Y in New York earlier that year. One year after the collapse of the World Trade Center, Estrin took the iconic photo of the World Trade Center Memorial in which a swirl of dust enfolds a circle of survivors at Ground Zero. It was “as if there were spirits on the ground there,” he recalled.