Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Renée C. Byer. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, Renée C. thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Innovation comes in all shapes, sizes and across all industries, so we’d love to hear about something you’ve done that you feel was particularly innovative.
Working in photography, video and the written word as a photojournalist I’ve traveled the world and my stories have published world wide. Much of my work focuses on the disadvantaged and stories that need to be told. Some stories have garnered profound change for the people I’ve profiled and I’m very proud of that. Sadly some have not.
I’m passionate about photojournalism and the enduring nature of the still image to inform and bring understanding to issues. In this fast-paced world where the emphasis is on immediacy a still photograph stops time: it gives the viewer a moment to think, to react, to feel. How better to inform the public than with documentary photojournalism on an intimate scale? It’s immediate and compelling, but it takes time to do well. Time to connect, time to see, and time to become invisible. I feel when images are combined with sensitive storytelling captions you go beyond photography to a deeper understanding of the subject. That helps build a stronger connection to the issues.
For the last twenty years most of my focus has been on extreme poverty and homelessness. I started noticing poverty fatigue is real and I began to get concerned and wonder what I could do beyond making images. How could I go beyond publication to a deeper more solution based educational tool?
I’m going to share an example about one photograph I made while working on my book ‘Living on a Dollar a Day: The Lives and Faces of the World’s Poor’ and how it made me think beyond publication.
The most harrowing scene I photographed was of a mother in India who was starving her child on purpose so that she could solicit funds to feed her other children. Her deprivation was so severe that this was all she could think to do: sacrifice one child for the others. This child was two years old and only weighed nine pounds. I was afraid that when people saw this picture they would turn away because it was so foreign and uncomfortable, rather than seeing their own child in this child’s eyes. As a result of me discovering her and making her photograph Sangreeta was taken away a few days later to live with Buddhist monks that were overseeing programs to help lift the slum out of poverty by feeding and educating the children. She is now doing well and attending grade school.
Everywhere I published or presented the picture I received many inquiries from people who wanted to help her. But Sangreeta is just one example of a terrible statistic. As of 2020, 15,000 children under the age of five die each day from preventable causes. That is the equivalent of twenty-four jumbo jet crashes, with only children on board, every single day. Unfortunately, this is not how our minds – or our media – work. What we focus our attention on are either the spectacular tragedies (natural disasters, terrorist attacks, crime, and now the Ukraine war), not the mortality rate of children who never make the headlines. Pictures matter.
I had traveled to ten countries and four continents in the making of the book. After the book published and the photos ran in National Geographic blog I realized from the comments that people wanted to help Sangreeta. I then created an exhibition to bring more awareness to this specific issue even though she had been helped because I realized more education was needed. I wanted all the issues that I documented that impact extreme poverty to have more of a solution based possibility. The book at the time was made to bring awareness to the United Nations Millennium Goals that were up for review in 2015.
After reading the comments book after the first showing of the exhibition it was clear there was an outpouring of support for the subjects in the exhibition, but people didn’t know how they could help. I wanted to turn that empathy into action so I founded a non-profit Positive Change Can Happen to help fund an educational component. I worked with an interdisciplinary design collective called A Fourth Act to develop an audience-engagement app. The app is built around ten goals: to fight e-waste and ensure environmental sustainability; to curb climate change and ensure agricultural sustainability; to promote sustainable cities and communities; to ensure access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation; to achieve healthcare and wellbeing for all; to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment; to achieve universal education; to end extreme hunger and achieve food security; to guarantee human rights for all and raise hope.
Each of the goals is linked to one of ten images in the exhibition. Each image is accompanied by a QR code that the viewer can use to open links on their mobile device. Here they can access educational content to gain better understanding of issues behind a story. They can hear me speak about the context of making each image. They can learn how to take action for change in a variety of ways and how to share the call to action through their social media networks. And, importantly, they can pledge or donate to a range of charities that work directly to alleviate extreme poverty and inequity – effectively turning the empathy felt while viewing the exhibition into action there and then, before the motivation fades. They can also support the exhibition through my non-profit Positive Change Can Happen.
It has proved a very effective innovative tool for engagement, education, and action and the exhibition will next be in Zurich in September to bring awareness to the United Nations Sustainable Goals up for review in 2030.
I’m always looking for galleries, museums and educational spaces to display this vital exhibition. Please contact me if you are interested.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I consider myself a catalyst for change. As a Pulitzer prize winning documentary photojournalist and Emmy nominated multimedia producer and videographer I’m known for my in-depth work focusing on the disadvantaged and those who would otherwise never be heard.
My ability to produce photographs with profound emotional resonance and sensitivity earned me the Pulitzer Prize for “A Mother’s Journey,” feature photography in 2007 and dozens of national and international honors, including the World Understanding Award from Pictures of the Year International, and Pulitzer Finalist in 2013 for “A Grandfather’s Sorrow and Love.”
Known for my ability to translate stark statistics into images that connect us to our humanity, I’ve traveled throughout Africa, Asia, Europe, North and South America, covering some the most important issues of our time. My stories have deepened our understanding of the environment, climate change, extreme poverty, homelessness, genetically modified food, healthcare, woman at war, domestic violence, Black Lives Matter movement, and the drought and economic crisis in California.
In 2016 the Sacramento Bee published a 20-page special section, “No Safe Place,” featuring my images chronicling the plight of Afghan SIV’s as they struggled in the U.S. , facing poverty and violence. My images from that project were exhibited at Visa Pour L’Image the premiere photojournalism festival in Perpignan, France in 2017. Images that I made from the George Floyd protests were also chosen for an exhibition at Visa in 2019 with photographers from the New York Times, Washington Post and LA Times.
A powerful image from the deadliest wildfire in California history of an abandoned walker in front of a smoke filled sky in Paradise, CA was selected as TIME magazine’s top 100 photographs in 2018. I was honored by TIME again in 2019 with my storytelling image of a homeless woman taking a bath near a fire hydrant in a makeshift tub. And my most recent homeless projects, “Homeless Crisis Worsens,” and “Dead-end Despair,” were selected consecutively the past two years for screening at Visa Pour L’Image.
My internationally acclaimed book, ‘Living on a Dollar a Day; The Lives and Faces of the World’s Poor,’ illuminates the stories of people living on the brink of survival, and invites you to put an end to extreme poverty. The book won First Place Documentary Book from the International Photography Awards in 2014 among other awards. I narrate an award winning documentary about the project that was released in 2016. It can be viewed on Amazon Prime and is a great educational component with the traveling exhibition.
The interactive traveling exhibit drawn from the book inspires viewers through compassion, education and social action. In April and May 2016, it was designated as an official exhibition at the Month of Photography, Los Angeles, and later shown at two venues in Sofia, Bulgaria: at the Global Women Leaders’ Forum, sponsored by the UNESCO Division of Gender Equality and the Council of Women in Business in Bulgaria, and at UniCredit Bulbank. In February 2017 it debuted with the youbridge.it mobile web application at MMTH Gallery and Atrium at Western Kentucky University where I was featured on CBS Sunday Morning with broadcast journalist Tony Dokoupil.
As a speaker I have stirred audiences to see how unbiased photojournalism can raise awareness and sometimes affect meaningful change. My compelling TEDx Tokyo talk, ‘The Storytelling Power of Photography,’ and my TEDx Sonoma County talk ‘The world’s Poor and the Power of Photography to Effect Change,’ received standing ovations. Valued for my critical insight I served as a judge for the prestigious Days Japan International Photojournalism Awards for ten years. In 2016 I was invited to join a UNESCO Who’s Who of Women Speakers. I’m one of a core group 70 women chosen to mark the 70th anniversary of UNESCO.
My photographs have appeared in publications and exhibitions throughout the world, including Paris Match, National Geographic, TIME, Newsweek, and notably at the International Photojournalism Festival Visa Pour L’Image seven times in Perpignan, France. Photographs from my book ‘Living on a Dollar’ were selected by renown photo editor Karen Mullarkey for a stunning display at The 2014 Tech Award gala in San Jose, CA.
I have presented my work in twenty-one solo Exhibitons and nineteen group shows in North America, Asia, Europe, and Oceania. My next exhibition of ‘Living on a Dollar a Day’ is in the heart of the city of Zurich, world-class science will meet world-class photography from 8 September 2023 at the ‘Open Your Eyes Photo Festival. Together, they are creating a new format for communication with a focus on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). My exhibition ‘Living on a Dollar a Day: The Lives and Faces of the World’s Poor’ will be part of the goal on poverty.
An interactive video interview with me that showed my Pulitzer Prize-winning images were on permanent exhibit in the Pulitzer Prize Photographs Gallery at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. until it closed.
My photographs have been featured in fourteen books including two monographs: ‘A Mother’s Journey and Selected Photographs’ [Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art 2010] and ‘Living on a Dollar a Day: the Lives and Faces of the World’s Poor’ [Quantuck Lane Press 2014].
My non-profit ‘Positive Change Can Happen’ is an educational foundation that seeks to inspire social action with compassion and education through photography for awareness to end extreme poverty by 2030.
Through my collaboration with A Fourth Act, we aim to reinvent how we experience photo exhibitions by bridging the power of stories that build awareness and turn compassion and empathy into social action. By using an innovative mobile web app, YouBridge.It, along with my photos, the interactive photo exhibit can engage visitors to participate in an interactive and powerful experience that goes beyond raising awareness.
As they walk through the gallery, YouBridge.It offers the photo exhibition visitors an opportunity to dive deeper into the issues behind the stories and makes tangible actions available at their fingertips. My photos are an emotional invitation to learn about the root causes of extreme poverty and hunger, and to take simple but concrete actions in 10 areas as illustrated with the selected images below. As a strong believer that positive change can happen, I encourage viewers to be part of it by shifting the language from problem-focused to a solution-oriented one.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
I feel blessed to be invited and accepted into peoples lives to tell their stories as they unfold. The most rewarding part is the kindness I’ve been privileged to witness and the human spirit that transcends some of the worst deprivation. And when peoples lives are changed profoundly for the better it gives me a feeling of purpose.
I want to share one more story about Fati a little girl I discovered working in an electronic waste dump site in Ghana, West Africa.
Nobody can prepare you for a scene like this. What used to be the pristine waters of the Korle Lagoon in the city of Accra, Ghana, is now an electronics dump that is so toxic that neither fish nor worms can survive, but impoverished children work there. I was stopped in my tracks when I came across eight-year-old Fati with tears streaming down her face from effects of malaria and a splitting headache. On her head she balanced a bucket containing what little metal she had found and which she needed to sell to survive. I was afraid to lift my camera and not be able to adequately capture her plight. I made the image and followed her back to her encampment where I found her mother and asked permission to use her picture in the ‘Living on a Dollar a Day’ book. I then went up north to work on another story, but I could not get Fati out of my mind, so I cut that trip short to return and find her at the dump.
Somehow, out of a sea of children, I found her, and I stayed with her all day and made more images. As a result of me publishing her story and that one emotionally gripping image many people were motivated to help Fati. A donor contacted The Forgotten International to support Fati, along with another girl and a little boy, to attend school. I went back and visited with Fati in 2015 and I am continuing to document her and will hopefully return when she graduates high school next year. I receive updates and calls from her, and the interpreter–fixer I worked with, who still watches over her. She has worked so hard to pull herself out of poverty and I hope someone will donate to get her into college because she wants to be a nurse.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
Photography is a universal language and, combined with trusted journalism, has facilitated some change. That’s why I continue to document the plight of those whose voices are not being heard. It does save lives, but not enough.
Without a shared humanity the cycle of poverty and homelessness will never be broken. Everyone has hopes and dreams and wishes for a hand up not a hand out. My biggest concern is poverty fatigue and a hardening lack of humanity. But I also see volunteers and non-profits that continue to work hard to save lives on a daily basis, which does give me hope.
Personally, I wish my images could be shared more on social media platforms because, in the past, people have been encouraged to action by my postings. I’ve received many inquiries on how to help through Facebook and Instagram, but it would be useful if there was an algorithm that circulated the posts to a wider audience. Perhaps the question is could these massive commercial social-media companies set aside some of that targeted circulation for free use by organizations and individuals promoting humanitarian issues such as this?
Contact Info:
- Website: www.reneecbyer.com
- Instagram: @reneecbyer
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/renee.byer.77/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/renée-c-byer-a8432939/
- Twitter: @RENEECBYER
Image Credits
©Renée C. Byer for all images