Should only working class photographers take photos of working class places? This is an interesting article I read yesterday, and it got me thinking about the history of photography of the working class. Photographer Jacob Reese was an immigrant to America himself, so he had firsthand experience with these tenements in New York City. And while he no longer lived there, while he was photographing them, he did have an inside knowledge. And I also think it’s important to note that it would have been absolutely impossible for any of these immigrants to photograph their own situation. It was prohibitively expensive. Fast forward to the Great Depression in the 1930s. Photographers like Dorothea Lang did not have experience living in this type of situation, but it was vital to document this part of American history. And none of the people most affected by the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl would have had the means to be able to do this themselves. To me, the best example of the proper way to document working class communities comes from photographer Ciril Heder continent, because she documented the same community decades apart in two very different ways. She was a native of Finland, but when she moved to England in 1969, she lived in a working class community called biker, and she documented that community. She lived there, she was a member of the community, and she was invited into people’s homes and businesses and showed what life was like there as a Member of the community. It’s away. In the early 2. She came back just to see what the community was like, and it had changed drastically. It was more of an immigrant community now. And instead of just picking up her camera and going right back to taking photos, she spent time getting reacquainted with the community because she was now an outsider. And it was a whole year that she spent going to community meetings, getting to know people, before they started inviting her into their homes to take photos. And in my opinion, this is the way it should be done. As an outsider, you need to spend the time getting to know people, letting them feel comfortable with you, and getting to know the area so you’re giving an accurate representation. And not come in like a tourist on the weekend. As photography and videography becomes more accessible to more groups of people, we’re able to get a much better inside look at places. But I do think outsider perspectives are always going to play a role. This is Keely Ryan. He’s a National Geographic photographer. He’s an American of indigenous and Chinese descent, and he’s very quick to point out in an interview that even as an indigenous photographer, he is not a member of most of the communities that he’s photographing. So he still needs to come in as an outsider. Now, he does say it gives him more of an understanding of maybe what Perspectives they’re coming from, but you still need to work to become a part of the community. And he stresses an approach that’s more hands on rather than trying to pretend to be a fly on the wall. So this is a complex topic I think we should continue to have discussions about. What do you think?