One day in Cambodia, Renée Byer watched a child running happily alongside a pool of green, polluted water. Human instinct began to tug at her. She wanted to help. She wanted to put an arm out to prevent him from tumbling into the muck. But she knew she had to capture the moment.
“It’s a hard scene to imagine,” she says. “The fact that he is smiling draws you into the photograph.”
As a photojournalist, Byer can only document the plight of her subjects. The rest is up to the power of her photographs and captions.
Balance between the job’s demand for impartiality and the human desire to help is often difficult.
In another instance, Byer was in the West African country of Mali, wilting in the heat, training her camera on a toddler helping his mother scrape together food for the community. Later she watched as villagers were informed that if they did not work, they could not share in the meal.
“It’s so hot, so miserable,” she recalls. “And I realized, ‘Oh my gosh, I get to go home.’”
Living on a Dollar a Day: The Lives and Faces of the World’s Poor became a book, a touring interactive exhibit and the subject of a presentation Byer will make on May 10 at the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel, part of the CPA’s lecture series.
The photographs explore the lives of desperately poor – those families existing on the equivalent of a dollar a day or less – in 10 countries on four continents. Some are almost charming. Others are stark, difficult to imagine. Many are disturbing.
Byer is a longtime photojournalist working for the Sacramento Bee, and her resume extends far beyond print, to include exhibitions and speaking engagements around the world, TEDx talks and an invitation to be one of 70 women chosen to mark the 70th anniversary of UNESCO.
Byer began her career after college as a part-time photojournalist for the Peoria Journal-Star in central Illinois. She attended a workshop in New York. Under the tutelage of Pulitzer-winning photographer J. Ross Baughman, Byer put together two award-winning photo essays. She’s since won a Pulitzer Prize for a 2007 portrayal of a single mother losing her young son to cancer, entitled A Mother’s Journey. Her credits include No Safe Place, a series detailing the struggles of Afghans who aided the U.S. war effort but find little help here.
Although the photographer may be dispassionate, Byer the person knew she could do something as she began collecting the photos that would become Living on a Dollar a Day. After hearing those who viewed her collection gasp and wonder how they could help, Byer created an app, Youbridge.it, that launched in April of this year. It’s an effort to set goals based on the exhibition and turn viewer empathy into action. Photographs in the app relate to issues affecting the poor, particularly in developing countries – the dumping of electronic waste, climate change, sustainable agriculture and so on – with encouragements to donate toward select organizations, such as Intrahealth International, which works in Mali providing treatment for women with obstetric fistula, or Tong-Len, a group in northern India addressing poverty issues with displaced peoples.
That’s how Byer walks the tightrope with such confidence. Her photographs document. Her exhibitions, presentations and the new app may inspire others to act.
Watching a starving mother and her two children suffering on the street as people walked by, blinders on, Byers says she began to question humanity. The next day, however, the same children welcomed her, clapping and singing and urging her to be a part of the moment.
“There is a human spirit that transcends deprivation,” Byer says. “That’s a gift back to you.”
Weekly: There is art and journalism, and the desire to take action. How do you manage it all?
Byer: I consider myself a journalist who uses the art of photography. The journalism part of the image is paramount. I’m asking people to imagine that reality as their reality. When you read about that image, you get that emotional connection. I call myself a catalyst. I’m presenting the information. You’re walking a fine line as a journalist. I don’t want to be known as an activist.
Some of the images do not immediately suggest poverty, until you read the caption.
The challenge was to make photographs that would invite people in. We’re very desensitized, and that’s sad. We look, but we don’t really look. The captions, they help steer you to what is going on. The educational app, that takes your empathy and moves you to action.
So you believe in the power of a photograph?
I believe there is a power in a still photograph that no other medium can match. It stays with you. You start to think. Just the result of that photograph, people have changed these children’s lives. Everybody wants to help the one child, but there are so many out there – 18,000 children die every day of causes that could be prevented. Think of that.
The dignity of my subjects is paramount. A lot goes into these photographs. There is a lot of conversation. I work with translators. I try to explain what I am trying to do, that I just want to watch them go through their day. This is about their plight. What does their day look like? The whole point is awareness.
Can photographs be objective?
We are selectively deciding depth of field, what is in focus, what is out of focus, how the light hits a subject – all of those things come into play. For me, the most important thing is capturing the emotion of my subject.
RENÉE BYER: LIVING ON A DOLLAR A DAY happens 6:30-8pm Thursday, May 10. Center for Photographic Art, San Carlos and Ninth, Carmel. $10; free for CPA members. 625-5181, photography.org