The photographer as propagandist

Finally, after four to five days of intensive editing of images and sound, I have managed to complete the final slideshow of the story about Peter and Frans. Here is the link.

I have learned to use a software tool called ‘Soundslides’ to put this slideshow together. Really a neat and easy to use tool - and inexpensive too. It essentially creates a flash file from your slideshow, which then can then be embedded on a website.

But coming back to the story itself. I think that the story is a very positive story and I have experienced it as such. I am convinced that Peter and Frans will become two committed and loving parents and I really admire their courage to become parents. And that is exactly what I wanted the story to show and tell. In that sense, I am a propagandist and using photography – or a multimedia piece for that matter – as an educational piece. This brings me back to a lecture we had last term with Tom Hunter who bluntly stated that all his photography is ‘propaganda’, i.e. he takes a stance and point of view in his stories.

And in a small way I have succeeded already. Johanna, the seven-year-old daughter of surrogate mother Elizabeth has presented some of the images I have taken during the course of this project and shown them at her school in Akron to educate her fellow pupils what a surrogate mother does. I was really moved when I learned about this.