NLP journalist fellow offers tips on photographing a neighborhood
David Gonzalez, a co-editor of Lens, the visual journalism blog of The New York Times, visited an 8th-grade American studies class at De La Salle Academy on the Upper West Side of Manhattan on May 15 to offer the students guidance and feedback on their photojournalism projects.
For their final project in the NLP unit, students studied social welfare issues through the lens of a camera, taking photographs that examined topics such as housing, education and income disparities in their school’s neighborhood and the city at large.
During his visit, Gonzalez — one of the first NLP journalist fellows in New York City — reviewed students’ photographs and shared how the standards of journalism are applied to stories told through the medium of photography. “Look at the variety of life, though,” he said. “Just because you’re photographing a ‘poor neighborhood,’ you don’t want to make everybody look broke down. You want to show the range of life. Just because people are poor doesn’t mean they have no dignity.”
For more, check out the video.