The Photo Industry Need To Do Better.

“This industry is unkind to mothers, there is no denying that.”

“Leading up to giving birth, I completely hid my pregnancy and never mentioned it to anyone. Even when I became so obviously pregnant, I just never talked about it to clients unless they brought it up.”

“I can’t tell you how many women shooters/assistants have felt they have to hide their pregnancy in order to keep working. The whole topic/concept is so difficult to navigate.”

“I didn’t share it on social media or tell anyone in person until I started to show. I hated it, I wanted to shout my exciting news from the rooftops but I knew the impact it would have on my work, which is incredibly sad”

Here are some comment from a post I made on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/C4yc-K6O-dq/

Leading up to giving birth, I completely hid my pregnancy and never mentioned it to anyone. Even when I became so obviously pregnant, I just never talked about it to clients unless they brought it up. I was terrified of losing a job if someone found out/like I’d be an undesirable person to work with. I did almost lose a job with a very large well known client who found out through word of mouth that I was in my 3rd trimester. They stopped emailing with me and instead called me to ask me very personal questions like when my due date was, if I was physically able to take on the job, etc. it was so sketchy that the woman did it all over the phone.

A week after my son was born, just home from the hospital, my editorial shoots and hustle paid off. I got a call from one of the big three agencies in Boston at the time. The Photo Buyer *gushed* over my work, the creative team loved it! They couldn’t wait to meet me. When can I come in? In my half awake new mom haze I said “I just got back from the hospital with my first baby. Let’s get something on the books in three weeks.” She hung up on me. I never heard from them again and still haven’t shot for them 20 years later.

DO NOT TELL A SOUL. I worked til 37 weeks but could have gone until the day I delivered. The main issue was being uncomfortable driving. I took 2 months “off” but it was extremely slow afterwards and no one hired me for an ad job for another year. If I did it again I’d keep it all a secret, unfortunately I lost a huge IUD pharma campaign because they found out I was pregnant. The irony! Obviously it’s illegal but what can you do?

Luckily I didn’t show and I hadn’t told anyone when Covid lockdowns started so I could kind of hide it through not being outside. Even after having my baby I didn’t really tell any clients or post about it. When my main client found out I had a kid the jobs dropped off dramatically.

During my first pregnancy which was 18 years ago, I had a photo editor tell me straight up when I went to the office after a shoot that she “wouldn’t have hired me if she knew how pregnant I was” – at about 32 weeks. In general I hid my pregnancy for fear I wouldn’t get work.

I kept my pregnancy to myself and did not share publicly or with clients. I just showed up to work pregnant and did my job just as well (sometimes better) than I did not pregnant.

Pregnancy is the easiest part of navigating life as a freelancer (I told clients on a need-to-know basis while pregnant 13 years ago, and happily worked until 39 weeks). The hard part of working in this field really happens once the child is born. I know many female photographers whose careers were sidetracked by the challenging logistics of balancing an unpredictable photo schedule and childcare.

I kept it very private. Nothing on the internet until my daughter was born. Almost 100% of the time, I only told clients once I was already on set because it was visible. I was soooo scared to lose work because I thought people might assume hiring me would be a risk.

I worked until I was 38 weeks pregnant but also didn’t tell any clients that I was pregnant for fear of not being hired. The part I found difficult was after I had the baby, trying to be 100% on shoots after little to no sleep some nights but the pumping was really difficult, having to take a break somewhere private every few hours was very tough.

Never told anyone but also wouldn’t lie if asked. Wore oversized clothes on set and worked up until a month before birth. Booked an extra assistant if needed just to have an extra person to have my back. Was back on set when baby was 8 weeks old which was a bit unnecessary/early in hindsight (for me – everyone’s different). A few clients didn’t book me because I was pregnant but I figured I don’t wanna work for them anyway – it’s my choice.

In my experience as a event and editorial shooter in LA at the time, not telling anyone i was pregnant until it was very obvious was a good choice for me, only because once the clients knew I was pregnant they were all very kind but many were also much more cautious and concerned about me, and acting as though i was much more delicate like I should be doing something at a desk LOL so I had to really reassure more people that i was absolutely fine and capable. And that women have done this since the dawn of humanity and i’d let them know if i was ever feeling not capable.

My boss and management was not supportive at all. I was scrutinized even if I only came in 30 minutes late due to doctors appointments and so I scheduled each doctors is the very first appointment of the day so I could rush to work

This is a really important topic to discuss as a lot of us feel we cannot tell people we are pregnant for fear of not getting booked. I was also one of those people. I didn’t share it on social media or tell anyone in person until I started to show. I hated it, I wanted to shout my exciting news from the rooftops but I knew the impact it would have on my work, which is incredibly sad. I would turn up to shoots and shock people not only because I was pregnant but because I was still very much capable. IMAGINE!? Once the news was out and baby arrived, I did have some clients presume that I wouldn’t want the work we had in the calendar for the coming months and THAT is the problem. The attitude towards pregnant people drastically needs to change

Book pregnant photographers and support them by booking them when they are back to work.

Let’s try and change this crappy narrative, we deserve better!

High Country News

Photographer: Emily Sullivan
Photo Editor: Bear Guerra

Heidi: How has your experience as a backcountry guide informed your photography
career, were you an athlete first and then a photographer? No doubt being a
guide took to you some magical places.
Emily: I was a photographer first—I got my BFA at VCU Arts in Richmond, Virginia, where I
fostered a longstanding love of photography and film through large-scale installation
pieces. Much of my time in art school was spent creating imagery that integrated
sculpture into landscapes and vice-versa. I grew up as a city kid, but my passion for
chasing light and landscapes later inspired me to seek out hiking, backcountry skiing,
and other forms of wilderness travel. Working in the outdoor industry as a guide helped
me to develop hard skills that allow me to now travel deeper into the mountains and
other remote locations with my camera.

You’re originally from the South East, what drew you to the vastness and wilds of
Alaska and how long have you been there?
I grew up in Richmond, Virginia, and lived there until I was 22 years old. In my teens, I
was drawn to Alaska with photography in mind—I wanted to experience and document
the unique landscapes that Alaska had to offer. I first came here in early 2010. I didn’t
know a single soul, but I wanted to learn more about the place and experience the land.
I spent the first nine summers guiding hikes and working seasonal jobs in Denali
National Park, then I moved full-time to Anchorage in 2019.

How did you weave your way into the community in AK and eventually, retrace
the (some) steps of the famed naturalist and conservationist, Mandy Murie, a
voice in helping create the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?
My relationship with the Alaskan landscape eventually inspired me to direct my energy
towards conservation issues. This is how I became more deeply entwined in
community—once I began working on land protections with environmental non-profits, I
became invested and involved with others doing similar work.
I was originally inspired to travel through the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge following
Mardy Murie’s steps to raise awareness for the importance of protecting the
Refuge’s coastal plain from oil and gas development. It wasn’t until later that I began to
understand how integral Indigenous land protectors have been to these issues, though
conservationists like the Muries are more widely celebrated. I also began to learn about
some of the harms of conservation—how designated Wilderness can prevent
Indigenous communities from accessing or hunting in their ancestral homelands.
Since then, I’ve turned my attention and efforts toward uplifting Indigenous knowledge
and stories in conservation work. My last four visits to the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge has been with Indigenous land protectors involved in a project called the
Imago Initiative, who have taught me so much about the importance of ancestral
reciprocity with lands and waters.

Tell us how you met Deenaalee Chase-Hodgdon and learn about their Smoke
House Collective.
Deenaalee and I met when we both worked seasonal jobs in Denali National Park about
ten years ago. We got to know each other better in recent years—Deenaalee is deeply
invested in land and water protections, so our work would sometimes overlap. Alaska is
a huge state with a small population, so our community is relatively tight-knit.
I learned about the Smokehouse Collective when Deenaalee shared an early fundraiser
to help the Collective purchase a commercial fishing permit. I loved what Ruth and
Deenaalee were aiming to do—reclaim cultural practices while redistributing fish,
berries, and other foods to communities that are experiencing food insecurity due to
colonization and the climate crisis. I wanted to support this work in any way possible.

How many days did you spend with her and what was the conversation in
between photo moments?
I spent a few days with Deenaalee in Interior Alaska, one day with their co-founder Ruth
in Anchorage, and then six more days in Dillingham with Deenaalee. We hadn’t planned
to shoot in such a concentrated manner, but plans changed a few times due to illness
and travel commitments. I was very appreciative of the trust Deenaalee showed me by
inviting me to join them in Dillingham. Shooting in small communities in Alaska requires
trust from the community and awareness of cultural norms and consent.
Deenaalee had established relationships in Dillingham from their time there as a
fisherman, but had just moved there full-time after a long period of nomadic movement
throughout Alaska. Between photo moments, Deenaalee was not only trying to get their
new home set up, but they were attending meetings with funders and partner
organizations, connecting with community members over Smokehouse initiatives, and
doing a lot of the behind-the-scenes work of getting the Collective up and running.
This made for interesting reporting as I got to learn a lot of the background of the nuts-
and-bolts of establishing a grassroots non-profit like the Smokehouse Collective.
Deenaalee and I even attended a local meeting of the federal Subsistence Advisory Council in Dillingham. These “down moments” added a lot of context to the story the
photo essay would tell. The on-the-ground reporting inspired us to run the image
captions in long form, adding nuance to the wonderful written intro by Joaqlin Estus.

How did this project come about and what is the Climate Futures Fund?
In August, I received a call for pitches for a photo grant offered by High Country News,
specifically seeking to tell stories of climate resilience. HCN offers such grants a few
times a year to support assignment-based photo essays for their special issues. The
Climate Futures Special Issue was focused on sharing the message that “it’s not too
late to create a better climate future,” and I thought Smokehouse was a great example
of boots-on-the-ground work towards creating climate resilience in Alaska. I reached out
to Deenaalee for a pre-interview, and then I wrote a 500-word pitch explaining my approach.
In September, I was awarded the grant. The final edit was due in November. HCN and I
agreed that the story would benefit from an Alaska Native writer, and the magazine
assigned the intro text to Tlingit journalist Joaqlin Estus.

What type of direction did you get from the HCN, most notably from the photo
editor Bear Guerra.
I met with photo editor Bear Guerra and issue editor Emily Benson a couple of times
before beginning my reporting, and then I met with Bear several times throughout the
assignment. He prompted me to consider how we could visualize the early phases of
Smokehouse’s resource distribution (Deenaalee jarring salmon), encouraged me to
show the behind-the-scenes work of establishing the Collective (Deenaalee and Ruth
meet on video calls), and helped me think through a number of challenges that arose
during my reporting.
A few of the scenes I hoped to capture were just not possible, so Bear provided
encouragement and was a great thought partner in pivoting towards what was possible.
I came back from Dillingham with more images and scenes than we could use
in the story, so Bear gave me an opportunity to cull and choose my own favorite images
before he curated the final set. I’m really happy with the set of images Bear ultimately
selected, and his input as a photo editor was vital to telling a cohesive story.

El Pais

Photographer: Daniel Beltra
Photo Editor: Gorka Lejarcegi

Heidi: Your work balances a line between environmental beauty and catastrophe with a focus on
aerial photography. How difficult was it to work from the ground, I know you had planned to fly a drone.
Daniel: Working from the ground was complicated, security is understandably tightened, and lots of different permits needed to be secured. There are also many military checkpoints all over the country.
The main difficulty for me was to wrap my head around the fact that the project I had planned and trained for most of the year (I had never flown drones before) was gone and I needed to get in gear and do what was possible.

Heidi: What foiled those plans and how hard was it to pivot? What was the lesson there?
Daniel: Even though my initial project using drones was supported by the Ukrainian authorities, things changed once I arrived in Kiev. A total ban on any civilian flying was implemented with no exceptions made. For a while, we tried to get special permission without any luck.
Flexibility would be the lesson, I had to adapt. I was concerned and had doubts, but I always told myself that the only way to take photographs was to go out and take them. Too much thinking or worrying is counterproductive. I just had to start working and get a feel for it. Now, almost three months after my return, I’m happy with the results.

Heidi: There’s an abundance of imagery covering the destruction in Ukraine, what drew you there?
Daniel: There are so many talented photographers showing the direct and brutal impact of the war.
The project I was trying to execute was different: documenting the war’s environmental impact from the air had not been done, at least not on a larger scale.
As horrible as the consequences of this terrible war were for Ukrainians, I wanted to show that there were other long-term consequences.

Heidi: Tell us about the planning and what support you had going into this trip.
Daniel: My project was sponsored by the Embassy of Spain in Ukraine and the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation and Development (AECID). I also got a couple of private donors to help.
Organizing a project like this remotely is challenging. The team at the Embassy in Kiev was crucial to get the planning going. It was them who made all the connections with the Ukrainian Ministry for the Environment. I also consulted with Greenpeace (I have a very long relationship with them) and they helped suggest locations to photograph. Between all these parties we came up with a list of locations that we thought were interesting. We then had to get the permits to be able to access them. Many were not available due to their proximity to combat zones.

Heidi: You mentioned working with the military who was juggling 100s of journalists’ requests a day – how did you hope your imagery would stand out?
Daniel: As I previously mentioned, the ecocide (environmental impact of the war) had not been covered extensively. I am not a war photographer, in fact, for this project, I had no access to the current front lines.
The final set of images diverted from that original goal. They show some of the scars the war is leaving in the country.

Heidi: Your images are haunting and absent of the human element – but indicate humanity, was that always the plan?
Daniel: That was part of the original plan. A lot of my work is done from the air. This unique perspective helps emphasize the impact we are having on the environment.
That was not an option in Ukraine. More artistic and abstract images helped give a different perspective, less harsh than pure photojournalism but also efficient to convey the ongoing tragedy.

Heidi: Knowing your work and plans for this project,  I thought the first image was land scars shot from above – I was wrong. Tell us about the image.
Daniel: I like images that can be confusing on a first approach, where the viewer needs to go an extra step to understand what’s on the frame. Through that tension, I hope to inspire some reflection. This particular photograph shows the snow-covered, bullet-ridden windshield of a van damaged during the battle in the small village of Lukashivka. I shot the image from the inside of the vehicle, what happened to the occupants? It’s a haunting frame.

Heidi: Do you have plans to return?
Daniel: Hopefully before this summer, working on that right now.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, what were your observations on how daily life has adapted since then?
We just passed the second anniversary of the invasion. I was amazed by the Ukrainian’s resilience, despite the daily missile and drone strikes and the endless air raid alarms. Most of the nights I was there the alarms were going off, even on multiple occasions on a single night. One day a Ukrainian friend asked me if I went to the refuge during the air raid.  When I answered I stayed in bed, and she replied you are Ukrainian now.  It made me reflect on how tough it is to be living constantly under threat and how humans manage to adapt to almost anything.