Bogre honors the foundations of evidential aspects of photography to forge human connection and activate advocacy. She wrestles with the elasticity of the medium as digital capture and distribution impact and change everything. Accountability and authenticity remain essential while construction, portraiture, and installation are broadening the tool kit for visual storytellers. 

In this book group, Michelle Bogre discusses, among other things:

Photojournalism as a subset of documentary photography with its own rules

How documentary is in its essence connected to the truth or fact of a story

The power of an image based in evidence, witness and narrative

How images tell a truth not the truth

Documentary as “the canary in the minefield”

Content over technique

Visual lyricism in stories revealing hidden histories

Responsibility to visual literacy

The absence of women photographers work being distributed and known and consequently all but absent in the canon of photo history

Decolonizing the camera

Resources

From Memory to Experience: The Smartphone, A Digital Bridge -  Stephen Mayes 

The Four Corners Project - International Center of Photography 

A Photograph Never Stands Alone - Teju Cole for New York Times 

iSee - exhibition review J Sybylla Smith

On Abortion - book review J Sybylla Smith for ZEKE Magazine

The Most Important Picture - non profit organization to continue collaborative work in marginalized communities worldwide

Companion Website for the book

MIT Open Documentary Lab

Decolonizing the Camera: Photography in Racial Times - Mark Sealy

VII Photo - Anarchy in the U.S. and IN feed by Chrisopher Morris using 3D scanner app for iPhone with Lidar 

Michelle Bogre Website | Instagram

Engage with J. Sybylla Smith  https://www.jsybyllasmith.com Instagram @jsybylla and Facebook @j.sybylla.smith