Event highlights female photojournalists’ work


On Tuesday, the Annenberg School of Journalism and the Center on Communication Leadership & Policy hosted “Through Her Lens: Women & Photojournalism,” an event that explored the role of photojournalists and evaluated the opportunities and challenges females face in pursuing careers in photojournalism.

Girl Power · From left to right: Lori Shepler, Marissa Roth, Pamela Peters and Barbara Davidson spoke with students about their experiences and challenges they faced as female photojournalists.  - Corey Marquetti | Daily Trojan

Girl Power · From left to right: Lori Shepler, Marissa Roth, Pamela Peters and Barbara Davidson spoke with students about their experiences and challenges they faced as female photojournalists. – Corey Marquetti | Daily Trojan

Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles Times staff photographer Barbara Davidson, award-winning photojournalist and documentary photographer Marissa Roth, multimedia documentarian Pamela Peters and award-winning photographer and author Lori Shepler were among the featured guest speakers headlining the event.

USC professor Geoffrey Cowan opened the panel humorously with the question, “Do female photographers shoot in a different eye?”

Davidson then started the discussion by presenting her photos that were taken in Iraq, Afghanistan, Congo, Israel, Gaza and Bosnia. She wanted to empower the victims of humanitarian crises such as war through her photographs.

Barbara Davidson, winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography, a 2011 National Emmy and the 2006 “Newspaper Photographer of The Year,” has been a staff photographer for the Los Angeles Times since 2007.

Though she has experienced many traumatic events through her camera lens, Davidson stressed the importance of remaining professional.

“My role as a photojournalist is to educate,” Davidson said. “If I am not able to put myself together, I am not doing my job. The photography is just a small part in this picture. Listening to their stories and riding the journey with them are the main purposes of documenting.”

Inspired by the 1961 film The Exiles, Pamela Peters had a similar vision. With her photographs, she wanted to accurately portray the lives of the Native Americans who live in cities.

“I wanted to create accurate and humanistic images of young Native Americans in Los Angeles that had never been in mainstream movies in Hollywood,” Peters said.

The discussion was later followed by a Q&A session. Questions were mostly centered on whether women took photographs differently and whether they had encountered sexism in the news.

“Stereotypes are out there but you just have to be professional,” Roth said. “Competition in the industry was challenging earlier on, but as long as you are professional, you can overcome these obstacles.”

The female photojournalists argued that they could offer unique perspectives to topics that are typically considered masculine, such as sports.

“I believe that women can bring unique perspectives to many topics,” Shepler said. “[A] camera is just a tool. People think that my pictures are different because I am there to capture emotions and that makes me so much better.”

Audience member Ewa Glowaczewska was thrilled to finally meet the award-winning Barbara Davidson.

“I am currently not enrolled in USC but in Santa Monica College,” Glowaczewska said. “My biggest passion is photojournalism and I found Barbara Davidson on Annenberg’s website which inspired me to attend this event. I am seeking a career in photojournalism and this is a perfect opportunity for me.”

Taoran Zhou, a first-year graduate student studying communication management, thought the forum provided many valuable insights with regards to women and their leadership in journalism.

“I am interested in gender when I do my research in journalism so I am very glad to understand how photographers see the world and how they interpret opinions about women,” Zhou said.