An Inspiring Conversation with Daniella Zalcman of Women Photograph
Daniella Zalcman is an award-winning Vietnamese American photojournalist based in New York and Paris, and she is the founder of Women Photograph, a 3-year-old non-profit that works to elevate the voices of women and non-binary visual journalists. The organization offers a range of programs and has a private database of 1,000 independent documentary photographers located in 100 countries who are available to commissioning editors.
GenderAvenger first came across Women Photograph in 2017 when Daniella launched the initiative. We’re pleased to share the following interview with you!
What inspired you to establish Women Photograph?
I've been a working photojournalist since I was 19, and there has always been an obvious disparity between the number of men and women in the field. Especially when I was starting out as a news photographer in NYC, I was often the only woman photographer at press conferences and events. A decade later, while it felt like the makeup of the industry had changed substantially and I had a strong network of women photojournalist peers and friends, I still didn't see proportional representation in the news media. I was at a photography festival in France in 2016 chatting with the Director of Photography of a major American magazine, and I asked her why her outlet didn't hire more women — the DOP responded that they'd hire more women if only they knew where to find them. So I went back to my Airbnb and created a Google Form to compile a database, and… here we are.
Women Photograph is focused on advocating for gender diversity, but progress has to be intersectional. We believe in fighting for a photojournalism industry that includes photographers from across the spectrum of racial and ethnic backgrounds, nationalities and geographies, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, and socioeconomic class. Photography is a mirror: we teach our audience how to see the world and expose them to people and places they'll never otherwise encounter. If we want to do that with clarity and nuance, we need to make sure that our industry is as diverse as the communities we hope to document.
When did you begin photographing, and when did you decide it was what you wanted to do?
I've wanted to be a journalist since I was about 12 or so — I think I've always felt a strong connection to the idea of documenting injustice, and, in a way that I probably couldn't verbalize as a teenager, I think I've always thought about the ethical ramifications of who gets to tell stories and document our collective history and how that impacts our consciousness. I didn't get to photography until I reached college — I went to Columbia University and joined the college newspaper the second I got to campus, and a serendipitous accident landed a camera in my hand for an emergency assignment photographing John Ashcroft, and I was hooked.
The Women Photography website has breathtaking photographs taken by women around the world. Do you think there is a difference between how men and women photographers approach documentary photojournalism?
I try to avoid making generalizations based on sex — because I think there are men who are brilliant social documentary photographers and women who are brilliant conflict photographers — but I often do see a delineation between the type of work men and women are most magnetically attracted to: I find women often want to tell stories in slower, more intimate ways (even if they happen to be in the context of conflict), where human connection is central to the process. Unfortunately, I also think that work is often undervalued because it tends to be less dramatic, less in the framework of the "decisive moment" that newspapers and magazines so often look to for exciting imagery.
Can you share your thoughts about the impact of photographs on human rights struggles?
Well, this is a tricky one — I think photography's role is always changing, as is the way we consume and engage with photography (imagine the difference between the number of photographs we consume every day in 2020 versus in 1980). And I think that photojournalists need to be constantly critical and thoughtful about the limitations of the medium, as well as how we can help the craft evolve. But that caveat aside: I think photography's strength is its ability to democratically and universally connect readers with another person or place or issue or idea in a second and tell a story and hopefully provoke some sort of emotion, whether that's empathy and deepened understanding or rage and a desire to take action.
What are some of the challenges for women in the profession?
Whatever barriers I believe exist in the US where I grew up and was educated, they're magnified in many other parts of the world, from access to training to social stigma against women pursuing a job that historically has been seen as the realm of men. And globally, pursuing photography as a career requires a high degree of financial privilege (that equipment isn't cheap!) that makes it potentially inaccessible or at the very least extremely difficult for anyone who doesn't have early career support from family or a partner, or access to generational wealth.
Women Photograph has a mentoring program. How is it going? Also did you have a mentor?
It's great! We're about to start our fourth cycle of our mentorship program in January, thanks to Program Manager Mallory Benedict. Each cycle pairs 22-24 early career photographers with a photo editor and photographer mentor over the course of a year. All of our mentors are incredible experts in the field, and they all generously donate their time to this program — we're extremely grateful to them. I had a lot of editors who gave me (possibly undeserved) opportunities early on in my career to whom I'm deeply thankful, but I don't really see myself as ever having had a mentor. I tend to work in fairly isolated ways and — maybe because I didn't see that many other women working in NYC when I started out — often felt very alone at the start of my career.
Women Photograph has developed a wide range of programs in addition to advocacy. Do you have any advice for someone looking to create a non-profit focused on womens’ voices in their chosen profession?
I'm proud of all of it — Women Photograph has been a huge labor of love, and it probably has taken several years off my life as well. Our grants, mentorship program, and workshops are probably the central focus of our programming, and three of the things that I saw as being the biggest opportunities for helping to build a more equitable industry from the ground up. In terms of advice: I think most of all (while this is totally counter to me and my personality) we have to recognize that this work takes time. There have been generations of women fighting these battles before us, and there will be generations more who will continue it. But if we all work to leave behind an industry that's better, then that’s a great start.