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Photo journalism is important to me for a couple of reasons. One because I think it's
a service. I am out there doing something for someone else. I get a great deal of enjoyment
from it. I am really trying to inform and help people have a better understanding of
their lives or other people's lives. It bring us closer together. I contacted Rich Clarkson
and speak to a Capital-Journal which was known as one of the best newspapers in the country.
Few months later he gave me a call and it was a greatest five years I ever spent in
the industry. The atmosphere in Topeka was such that we were trained as complete photojournalists.
We would come up with our own stories, write the headlines, the captions, do the layout.
It was up to us to really constantly be thinking about what was important in our community
and what was important to the readers. One of the most special assessment that I worked
in Topeka was the old surprise running piece on natural childbirth, Lamaze Method of Birth.
It is important because of the all surprise of course it was important at the time when
it was done do expose people to something other than the father sitting in the waiting
room with reading red book and smoking the cigar. He can now be a part of the birth process
as well. I had an assignment to go photograph the demolition of a neighbourhood in Topeka,
Kansas and they were tearing this down for a capital improvements and it was a huge neighbourhood
that was just being levelled and I came upon this older gentleman who standing there just
gazing up at these houses that were once his neighbourhood. He wants to live there, wonderful
face and then his glasses were reflecting his house that he was watching being demolished.
I was continually being exposed to this drumbeat of the importance of black woman as pioneers
at a time when they were really dealing with more sexism and racism before they all passed
away I thought somebody really needed to go out and document them and interview them and
let them have their say. I think the photograph of Septima Clark one on the cover is one
of my favourites.