The Weight of this Hard Drive

This drive contains literally thousands of photos made over the past few weeks. It is honestly one of my most valued possessions right now. (Don’t worry I have multiple back-ups.) I do not take this drive lightly, indeed it weighs heavily on me right now.

When I initially grabbed my camera and set out to photograph the first day of protests, back on May 30th, I had no sense that it would turn into the weeks long event it has. I misjudged both the national environment, and the local one. Since that first Saturday I have spent countless hours (okay I could probably count up the hours by looking at the time stamps on these photos) making images in a hope to document what was happening here in Lancaster.

There is a good deal of national coverage about the protests, in Minneapolis, in DC, in New York, in Seattle, in Atlanta. Much of the national conversation has been focused on what is happening in these large urban areas, or how these protests have spread internationally. But what is happening in the smaller cities around the United States, strikes me as equally important. And these stories also need to be told. Having experienced the Lancaster ones as well, I feel that Lancaster has a unique story to tell: a city that managed sustained non-violent protests, that is on a path to lead to local change.

On the evening of May 30th, after returning home, my initial intention was to cull the photos and choose ones that captured the events of the day, while mixing some text, producing a short photo essay to tell the story of that day, pushing it to my personal website much like I have done with other protest actions. (As an example of what I was initially imagining you can see this one on protests at the Supreme Court, or this one on an occupation of an energy company building.) That presentation seems totally inadequate to the task. This event demands something more. It deserves something more.

One path would be to just curate all these photos, pick out the best hundred or so and just dump them on the internet, post them to Facebook or something. But that doesn’t seem the best or most responsible path.
There is an important story to be told here, not only about what happened in Lancaster during these weeks of action, but also what led us to this point, how the community responded, what elected officials did, how leaders emerged to advocate for their communities, and importantly what happens now. And these photos, I think, are a good way to tell this story. To put it another way, I am less interested in using these photos as journalism, and more interested in leveraging them as documentary. I don’t want to tell a story that is simply about protest, producing another series of photos that could be at best deemed as protest porn. This story, these photos, need to be situated within the larger context of the communities working towards justice, not simply depictions of “rage” on the street. 

So, the question is where to go from here. What is the best way to present these photographs? 

I really am not sure. In one sense I want to produce something that is directed at the Lancaster community, but in another, as I mentioned above, I think the Lancaster story is important to a broader audience, so that the voices and stories of what happened in smaller cities across the United States also inform our larger conversations.

And, I feel that it is important to add at this point, that this isn’t really my story. I want to write more later about this, as it is a rather significant conversation in its own right. But I am acutely aware that I am not Black, that I am a white photographer making images of a movement that is about justice for Black people. Which is to say that while I might be the storyteller, it is most certainly not my story. 

In academia, there are some of us who talk about the need for “community based scholarship.” The idea being that academics/scholars should work to produce research with communities, not research about communities. Work with people, not about them. I see whatever form these photos take as needing to be handled in this way: working with the community to tell a story, not making a story about them.

Anyway, that’s what is weighing on me now as I contemplate this drive, and all the images here. I have started reaching out to people I know, other photographers, other experts, to help me think about this, and plan for using these images, thinking thru form, presentation, editing, etc. But for those here in Lancaster, whose story this is, I would love to hear from you as well. So send me an email, message me on facebook, we can do virtual coffee or hang out at a distance in a park (we still live in Covid world), or stop me at the continued movement building, and organizing (if you can catch me with the camera down) and tell me what you think.