“Poor doesn’t necessarily mean, miserable.” -Gary Knight
Today, I had the fine pleasure of listening to, meeting, and buying coffee for Gary Knight, cofounder of the VII Photo Agency, arguably one of the premier photojournalistic agencies in the world.
Projected on the giant screen in the Harvard News Office was a frame from a scene in the streets of India. Knight was documenting poverty. On the one side of the two tone frame was what appeared to be a hooded man of lower class, and on the other side, what appeared to be a couple, smiling at each other. To paraphrase, he said that in his earlier days he would have only photographed the lower class man, but now he includes both poverty and sparks of happiness in his photos. Knight would later say, “Poor doesn’t necessarily mean, miserable.”
Knight’s black and white compositions are simple. His style, or lack there of, removes him from the equation of viewer and photo, and thereby allows the subject to garner the viewer’s full attention. Something he believes is very important.
I found this all too appropriate as I had recently edited some footage Kristyn Ulanday and I had shot at a homeless shelter as part of our AmericanPoverty.org grant. The video was, more or less, one of my Two Minute Portraits of a homeless man who said he was happy.
Poor doesn’t necessarily mean, miserable.
Let me present to you, Mr. Reginold Beckford:
