Photography and Social Change

    Tonika Johnson's project was called the Folded Map Project. The idea behind Johnson's project was to take pictures of the people that lived at the North and South addresses of Chicago. She would find the people with the same address with the only difference being the cardinal direction and would take a picture of them together as well as take a picture of the two houses and put them side by side. This project was in 2018 between the months of July to October.  https://www.foldedmapproject.com/  The change that the project created was showing others what life was like on the other side of town. These people wanted to get to know more about each other and connections were formed between people that may have never met or talked to each other in different circumstances.     I don't believe any controversy has occurred over their work but there has been some good from it. A lot of attention was brought to the disparities in urban living and showed people how...

      Animal Overpopulation is when there is an influx of animals in shelters and communities. This can be caused by not having pets spayed and neutered, bad breeding practices or too many animals being brought to shelters.      In the Granville county shelter reports  one of the biggest similarities is the dogs and cats have the highest rates of being brought into shelters and being euthanized. There is also a similarity in that cats have the highest euthanization rates even though the number of dogs and cats being brought into the shelter is very close. The biggest difference is the number of different types of animals being brought in. In 2014 only 5 different types of animals were brought into the shelter, whereas in 2019 there were 19 different types of animals being brought into the shelter. Another difference is that there were fewer euthanizations in 2019 than there were in 2014.      I attribute these things to the idea more peo...

      To me, activism through photography is a way of showing people what life is like for others. Not everyone is so fortunate and those that live a higher status don't always notice the troubles that others go through when passing through life. With photography, we can show people the struggles and hardships that others may face and bring light to different problems in the world.     One of the artists I read about that inspired me was John Thomson. I was inspired by Thomson because he didn't use special techniques to add layers or try to give the photo a certain feel. His pictures purely showed the subject in a crisp, clear, and unedited way. His photos didn't try to hide behind specific lighting either. In one of his photos called The Crawlers , the subject is clearly shown and in the photograph, you can the subject's worn out and distressed clothes, the exhaustion in her face, and the baby in her arms. Thomson's work showed people the true lives of those li...