3: Life through the Lens: Food, People, and Photography

In this podcast our guest is professor Dino Chiecchi, a life-long photographer journalist who now teaches in the Department of Communications at the University of Texas at El Paso. He speaks of the value the food has historically played in capturing peoples’ emotions in divers social, historical, cultural and economic realities. He this podcast, he talks about food in photography pertaining to food distribution, poverty, war, and famine. More specifically, he addresses several important factors that photographers should consider while photographing these social issues in first-world countries as well as third-world countries. He offers tips to listeners, which include caring about the subject matter and learning to show empathy without being too involved. He indicates the importance of separating the self from the subject matter since it could compromise the objective at hand. If photographs include people, they are the most important subject matter to consider because their body language not only reveals a great deal about them as an individual but as a part of the collective whole. He emphasizes the universal understanding that photography offers to a diverse audience regardless of gender, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, etc. However, he stresses the value of capturing the honest truth about life, both positive and negative, rather than concealing it through staging photographs. A has the ability to communicate across cultures, yet captions and cut-lines are crucial to know vital information such as the ‘who, what, where, when and why’ of a photograph. Have we captured your attention? Join us as we cultivate mindfulness while we capture moments and create memories.