Private Story
Anja Niedringhaus Courage in Photojournalism Award nomination
It tells life stories; it tells of journeys, of invisible scars and hidden forces, of what unites us in spite of our different identities, beliefs, genders, sexualities and ethnicities. It tells of that common humanity we must have the courage to recognize and respect in each other.
I work as a freelancer and recently through a non-profit I founded called the WE project, a multimedia series of portraits and stories around marginalized communities in rural and semi-urban Missouri.
The photographs in this nomination draw from earlier work (the Mudshow Diaries, a long-term project shot while living and working in a traveling circus raising my family) and recent, ongoing work (the WE project.)
Photojournalism for me has always been a way to wrestle with issues of social justice and social change. Lately my work has focused on marginalized groups in the U.S. heartland, on highlighting and celebrating these in order to help change the media's narrative. I believe changing the narrative is essential work, because the stories we tell shape the way we are, as individuals and as a society, and in turn shape policies that have grave and concrete consequences in our daily lives.
Through my photojournalism and in a place of deep conservatism and sometimes manifest hate (a trans woman was murdered in April down state in Springfield, Missouri; the marker of the last documented lynching in Columbia was forcibly removed with a blow torch a week after a rededication ceremony in April) I strive to help change the narrative and help empower people who have been and continue to be systemically oppressed. Seeing them occupying the space of our gaze in beauty and authenticity is seeing and elevating our common humanity.
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