Visual Storytelling

Connecting through story

Tanya Price’s grandmother intended to watch the birth of her great-grandchild.

But she gave up that opportunity.

Tanya, a pregnant teenager whose mother had also been a pregnant teenager, was from the area with the highest risk of infant mortality in the nation.

The family and I felt strongly that the story of teen pregnancy needed to be told.

The hospital did not want to allow a documentary photographer into the delivery room.

So the grandmother, stating that the family should determine who was in the delivery room, gave up her spot so that I could document the event. It was a culminating event in a months-long storytelling effort.

The family prevailed and the story was told, beginning on the front page of the local newspaper.

Such is the nature of mutual respect and empathy.

As a visual storyteller, I conduct research, foster empathy, and then carefully proceed to accurately and fairly tell stories so that communities might take action. The skills I learned as a documentary photographer, I found, are much like those needed by today’s design thinkers.

I take my responsibilities seriously — whether I’m documenting the playful activities of teenagers in a soap fight or a family’s struggles with brain cancer. Or helping a library innovate new ways to engage its community.

Here are a few samples of my visual storytelling work.