“One of the things you struggle with is how not to take the obvious image,” said photographer Darcy Padilla to a standing-room only crowd at SF Camerawork. Joined by veteran photojournalist Ken Light, the two presenters discussed braving the campaign trail, the importance of media credentials and how to navigate pesky security guards.
The fourth installment of the Storytellers Lecture Series was emceed by Judy Walgren, Editorial Director at ViewFind. The program pairs two photographers for a compelling discussion on visual storytelling.
Kicking off the night, Padilla discussed the unique limitations of photographing high-profile politicians. “At a lot of the Trump events you are in a cage,” she said. “If you stay in the cage, you’re only going to get the cage photo. It took a lot of negotiating to be able to get out and capture that different image.”
When asked about her biggest challenge, Padilla said, “The hardest question to answer is: How do you navigate your feelings around what the candidate is saying? With Trump, I’m trying not to let his words influence how I see. My objective as a photographer is to try to make the best possible image I can without being influenced by the rhetoric I am hearing.”
Building off of Padilla’s talk, seasoned photographer Ken Light began his speech with a story about how Padilla aggressively evaded a Trump security guard. “They were going to have to drag her out,” he said. “But he relented. Somehow she pushed her way in.”
Shifting gears from our current election to the politics of the 60s and 70s, Light outlined his book, What’s Going On? 1969–1974. “These photographs offer a portrait of America the way it really was for me as I lived it and documented it from 1969. It covers from when I turned 18 and first began to identify as a photographer, all the way through President Nixon’s resignation in 1974.”
“Most photographers are very curious. Photography is this amazing tool that allows you to enter worlds that you would never be able to enter in a million years. By having a camera, you can say, ‘Yes, I want to be right next to Donald Trump—or I want to be on the border at night and see people coming through the fence.” — Ken Light
Highlighting the cultural shifts of the late sixties, Light said, “In ’69 there was a change. People began to have long hair—which now isn’t a big deal—but in ’69, if you went to high school or college with long hair, you were going to get beat up everyday. Long hair said you were an outsider, a troublemaker, a radical, you didn’t want to follow the rules.”
Recalling his experience publishing What’s Going On? 1969–1974, Light said, “Everyone who looked at the 60s pictures was very freaked out. They’d say, ‘We hate Nixon,’ or ‘Everyone’s seen these pictures,’ or ‘It’s an old story.’ I realized that people are still scared of this era. There’s this division in America and a lack of willingness to come to terms.”
From the turbulent politics of the sixties to the bizarre state of today’s election, Padilla and Light made it clear that the more things change, the more things stay the same.
Written by Chris Ames, ViewFind
What’s Going On? 1969–1974 is a monograph of Ken Light’s earliest work from 1969 to 1974 documenting the social landscape of America as it roiled with upheaval. Light began as a participant in the youth movement and later became an observer of the entire spectrum of cultural and political wars in America, crisscrossing the country with youthful passion and a yearning to explain his county to himself.
Darcy Padilla is a photographer, lecturer and member of Agence Vu in Paris. Padilla’s awards include a W. Eugene Smith Grant, Guggenheim Fellowship, Alexia Foundation Grant, Open Society Institute Fellowship, Getty Images Grant, Alicia Patterson Fellowship and three World Press Photo Awards. In 2016, Padilla received the Canon Female Photojournalist Award and has been documenting the U.S. elections exclusively for the French newspaper, Le Monde.
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