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How to Create an Engaging Photo Essay (with Examples)

Photo essays tell a story in pictures. They're a great way to improve at photography and story-telling skills at once. Learn how to do create a great one.

Learn | Photography Guides | By Ana Mireles

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Photography is a medium used to tell stories – sometimes they are told in one picture, sometimes you need a whole series. Those series can be photo essays.

If you’ve never done a photo essay before, or you’re simply struggling to find your next project, this article will be of help. I’ll be showing you what a photo essay is and how to go about doing one.

You’ll also find plenty of photo essay ideas and some famous photo essay examples from recent times that will serve you as inspiration.

If you’re ready to get started, let’s jump right in!

Table of Contents

What is a Photo Essay?

A photo essay is a series of images that share an overarching theme as well as a visual and technical coherence to tell a story. Some people refer to a photo essay as a photo series or a photo story – this often happens in photography competitions.

Photographic history is full of famous photo essays. Think about The Great Depression by Dorothea Lange, Like Brother Like Sister by Wolfgang Tillmans, Gandhi’s funeral by Henri Cartier Bresson, amongst others.

What are the types of photo essay?

Despite popular belief, the type of photo essay doesn’t depend on the type of photography that you do – in other words, journalism, documentary, fine art, or any other photographic genre is not a type of photo essay.

Instead, there are two main types of photo essays: narrative and thematic .

As you have probably already guessed, the thematic one presents images pulled together by a topic – for example, global warming. The images can be about animals and nature as well as natural disasters devastating cities. They can happen all over the world or in the same location, and they can be captured in different moments in time – there’s a lot of flexibility.

A narrative photo essa y, on the other hand, tells the story of a character (human or not), portraying a place or an event. For example, a narrative photo essay on coffee would document the process from the planting and harvesting – to the roasting and grinding until it reaches your morning cup.

What are some of the key elements of a photo essay?

• Tell a unique story – A unique story doesn’t mean that you have to photograph something that nobody has done before – that would be almost impossible! It means that you should consider what you’re bringing to the table on a particular topic.
• Put yourself into the work – One of the best ways to make a compelling photo essay is by adding your point of view, which can only be done with your life experiences and the way you see the world.
• Add depth to the concept – The best photo essays are the ones that go past the obvious and dig deeper in the story, going behind the scenes, or examining a day in the life of the subject matter – that’s what pulls in the spectator.
• Nail the technique – Even if the concept and the story are the most important part of a photo essay, it won’t have the same success if it’s poorly executed.
• Build a structure – A photo essay is about telling a thought-provoking story – so, think about it in a narrative way. Which images are going to introduce the topic? Which ones represent a climax? How is it going to end – how do you want the viewer to feel after seeing your photo series?
• Make strong choices – If you really want to convey an emotion and a unique point of view, you’re going to need to make some hard decisions. Which light are you using? Which lens? How many images will there be in the series? etc., and most importantly for a great photo essay is the why behind those choices.

9 Tips for Creating a Photo Essay

Credit: Laura James

1. Choose something you know

To make a good photo essay, you don’t need to travel to an exotic location or document a civil war – I mean, it’s great if you can, but you can start close to home.

Depending on the type of photography you do and the topic you’re looking for in your photographic essay, you can photograph a local event or visit an abandoned building outside your town.

It will be much easier for you to find a unique perspective and tell a better story if you’re already familiar with the subject. Also, consider that you might have to return a few times to the same location to get all the photos you need.

2. Follow your passion

Most photo essays take dedication and passion. If you choose a subject that might be easy, but you’re not really into it – the results won’t be as exciting. Taking photos will always be easier and more fun if you’re covering something you’re passionate about.

3. Take your time

A great photo essay is not done in a few hours. You need to put in the time to research it, conceptualizing it, editing, etc. That’s why I previously recommended following your passion because it takes a lot of dedication, and if you’re not passionate about it – it’s difficult to push through.

4. Write a summary or statement

Photo essays are always accompanied by some text. You can do this in the form of an introduction, write captions for each photo or write it as a conclusion. That’s up to you and how you want to present the work.

5. Learn from the masters

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Making a photographic essay takes a lot of practice and knowledge. A great way to become a better photographer and improve your storytelling skills is by studying the work of others. You can go to art shows, review books and magazines and look at the winners in photo contests – most of the time, there’s a category for photo series.

6. Get a wide variety of photos

Think about a story – a literary one. It usually tells you where the story is happening, who is the main character, and it gives you a few details to make you engage with it, right?

The same thing happens with a visual story in a photo essay – you can do some wide-angle shots to establish the scenes and some close-ups to show the details. Make a shot list to ensure you cover all the different angles.

Some of your pictures should guide the viewer in, while others are more climatic and regard the experience they are taking out of your photos.

7. Follow a consistent look

Both in style and aesthetics, all the images in your series need to be coherent. You can achieve this in different ways, from the choice of lighting, the mood, the post-processing, etc.

8. Be self-critical

Once you have all the photos, make sure you edit them with a good dose of self-criticism. Not all the pictures that you took belong in the photo essay. Choose only the best ones and make sure they tell the full story.

9. Ask for constructive feedback

Often, when we’re working on a photo essay project for a long time, everything makes perfect sense in our heads. However, someone outside the project might not be getting the idea. It’s important that you get honest and constructive criticism to improve your photography.

How to Create a Photo Essay in 5 Steps

Credit: Quang Nguyen Vinh

1. Choose your topic

This is the first step that you need to take to decide if your photo essay is going to be narrative or thematic. Then, choose what is it going to be about?

Ideally, it should be something that you’re interested in, that you have something to say about it, and it can connect with other people.

2. Research your topic

To tell a good story about something, you need to be familiar with that something. This is especially true when you want to go deeper and make a compelling photo essay. Day in the life photo essays are a popular choice, since often, these can be performed with friends and family, whom you already should know well.

3. Plan your photoshoot

Depending on what you’re photographing, this step can be very different from one project to the next. For a fine art project, you might need to find a location, props, models, a shot list, etc., while a documentary photo essay is about planning the best time to do the photos, what gear to bring with you, finding a local guide, etc.

Every photo essay will need different planning, so before taking pictures, put in the required time to get things right.

4. Experiment

It’s one thing to plan your photo shoot and having a shot list that you have to get, or else the photo essay won’t be complete. It’s another thing to miss out on some amazing photo opportunities that you couldn’t foresee.

So, be prepared but also stay open-minded and experiment with different settings, different perspectives, etc.

5. Make a final selection

Editing your work can be one of the hardest parts of doing a photo essay. Sometimes we can be overly critical, and others, we get attached to bad photos because we put a lot of effort into them or we had a great time doing them.

Try to be as objective as possible, don’t be afraid to ask for opinions and make various revisions before settling down on a final cut.

7 Photo Essay Topics, Ideas & Examples

Credit: Michelle Leman

• Architectural photo essay

Using architecture as your main subject, there are tons of photo essay ideas that you can do. For some inspiration, you can check out the work of Francisco Marin – who was trained as an architect and then turned to photography to “explore a different way to perceive things”.

You can also lookup Luisa Lambri. Amongst her series, you’ll find many photo essay examples in which architecture is the subject she uses to explore the relationship between photography and space.

• Process and transformation photo essay

This is one of the best photo essay topics for beginners because the story tells itself. Pick something that has a beginning and an end, for example, pregnancy, the metamorphosis of a butterfly, the life-cycle of a plant, etc.

Keep in mind that these topics are linear and give you an easy way into the narrative flow – however, it might be difficult to find an interesting perspective and a unique point of view.

• A day in the life of ‘X’ photo essay

There are tons of interesting photo essay ideas in this category – you can follow around a celebrity, a worker, your child, etc. You don’t even have to do it about a human subject – think about doing a photo essay about a day in the life of a racing horse, for example – find something that’s interesting for you.

• Time passing by photo essay

It can be a natural site or a landmark photo essay – whatever is close to you will work best as you’ll need to come back multiple times to capture time passing by. For example, how this place changes throughout the seasons or maybe even over the years.

A fun option if you live with family is to document a birthday party each year, seeing how the subject changes over time. This can be combined with a transformation essay or sorts, documenting the changes in interpersonal relationships over time.

• Travel photo essay

Do you want to make the jump from tourist snapshots into a travel photo essay? Research the place you’re going to be travelling to. Then, choose a topic.

If you’re having trouble with how to do this, check out any travel magazine – National Geographic, for example. They won’t do a generic article about Texas – they do an article about the beach life on the Texas Gulf Coast and another one about the diverse flavors of Texas.

The more specific you get, the deeper you can go with the story.

• Socio-political issues photo essay

This is one of the most popular photo essay examples – it falls under the category of photojournalism or documental photography. They are usually thematic, although it’s also possible to do a narrative one.

Depending on your topic of interest, you can choose topics that involve nature – for example, document the effects of global warming. Another idea is to photograph protests or make an education photo essay.

It doesn’t have to be a big global issue; you can choose something specific to your community – are there too many stray dogs? Make a photo essay about a local animal shelter. The topics are endless.

• Behind the scenes photo essay

A behind-the-scenes always make for a good photo story – people are curious to know what happens and how everything comes together before a show.

Depending on your own interests, this can be a photo essay about a fashion show, a theatre play, a concert, and so on. You’ll probably need to get some permissions, though, not only to shoot but also to showcase or publish those images.

4 Best Photo Essays in Recent times

Now that you know all the techniques about it, it might be helpful to look at some photo essay examples to see how you can put the concept into practice. Here are some famous photo essays from recent times to give you some inspiration.

Habibi by Antonio Faccilongo

This photo essay wan the World Press Photo Story of the Year in 2021. Faccilongo explores a very big conflict from a very specific and intimate point of view – how the Israeli-Palestinian war affects the families.

He chose to use a square format because it allows him to give order to things and eliminate unnecessary elements in his pictures.

With this long-term photo essay, he wanted to highlight the sense of absence and melancholy women and families feel towards their husbands away at war.

The project then became a book edited by Sarah Leen and the graphics of Ramon Pez.

Picture This: New Orleans by Mary Ellen Mark

The last assignment before her passing, Mary Ellen Mark travelled to New Orleans to register the city after a decade after Hurricane Katrina.

The images of the project “bring to life the rebirth and resilience of the people at the heart of this tale”, – says CNNMoney, commissioner of the work.

Each survivor of the hurricane has a story, and Mary Ellen Mark was there to record it. Some of them have heartbreaking stories about everything they had to leave behind.

Others have a story of hope – like Sam and Ben, two eight-year-olds born from frozen embryos kept in a hospital that lost power supply during the hurricane, yet they managed to survive.

Selfie by Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman is an American photographer whose work is mainly done through self-portraits. With them, she explores the concept of identity, gender stereotypes, as well as visual and cultural codes.

One of her latest photo essays was a collaboration with W Magazine entitled Selfie. In it, the author explores the concept of planned candid photos (‘plandid’).

The work was made for Instagram, as the platform is well known for the conflict between the ‘real self’ and the one people present online. Sherman started using Facetune, Perfect365 and YouCam to alter her appearance on selfies – in Photoshop, you can modify everything, but these apps were designed specifically to “make things prettier”- she says, and that’s what she wants to explore in this photo essay.

Tokyo Compression by Michael Wolf

Michael Wolf has an interest in the broad-gauge topic Life in Cities. From there, many photo essays have been derived – amongst them – Tokyo Compression .

He was horrified by the way people in Tokyo are forced to move to the suburbs because of the high prices of the city. Therefore, they are required to make long commutes facing 1,5 hours of train to start their 8+ hour workday followed by another 1,5 hours to get back home.

To portray this way of life, he photographed the people inside the train pressed against the windows looking exhausted, angry or simply absent due to this way of life.

You can visit his website to see other photo essays that revolve around the topic of life in megacities.

Final Words

It’s not easy to make photo essays, so don’t expect to be great at it right from your first project.

Start off small by choosing a specific subject that’s interesting to you –  that will come from an honest place, and it will be a great practice for some bigger projects along the line.

Whether you like to shoot still life or you’re a travel photographer, I hope these photo essay tips and photo essay examples can help you get started and grow in your photography.

Let us know which topics you are working on right now – we’ll love to hear from you!

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Ana Mireles is a Mexican researcher that specializes in photography and communications for the arts and culture sector.

Penelope G. To Ana Mireles Such a well written and helpful article for an writer who wants to inclue photo essay in her memoir. Thank you. I will get to work on this new skill. Penelope G.

Herman Krieger Photo essays in black and white

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What is a Good Narrative Photo Essay?

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Early photographers quickly realized that an image could be worth 1,000 words - and in some cases many more. Words evoke a largely intellectual response from those who read them, but images can produce intense emotional reactions. A good photojournalist harnesses this potential to confront viewers with the reality of pain, injustice or whatever his or her story incorporates. Indeed a successful and factual photo essay has the potential to bring about social change, provoke lawmakers in to changing laws, and even end wars.

An effective and successful essay produces an emotional reaction in the majority of viewers. It may cause them to laugh, feel sad, angry or even walk away in tears. Such reactions are evidence of an author's success. Viewers who walk away unmoved feed back a much less positive message about the success of the work. The best photo essays, like good books and music, tend to stand the test of time. They are still around after countless years, often because the message they convey continues to be relevant even though the events portrayed have long since passed in to history.

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Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

The structure of photographic metaphors.

Nude, Portland, Oregon

Minor White

Harry Callahan

Eleanor, Chicago

Aaron Siskind

Occasion for Diriment

Ralph Eugene Meatyard

Port Authority

Ray K. Metzker

Lisa Hostetler Department of Photographs, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

October 2004

While postwar street photographers on the East Coast were transforming documentary photography into a subjective experience of the contemporary world, photographers in other parts of the country were expanding the f/64 tradition to accommodate their own personal creative spirit. One locus of this activity was Chicago, home of the New Bauhaus established by László Moholy-Nagy in 1937 (the school closed a year later but was reincarnated as the School of Design in 1939, renamed the Institute of Design in 1944, and incorporated into the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1949). In the tradition of the German Bauhaus , which had been closed for political reasons in 1933, the school placed photography at the center of its curriculum on the premise that the photographic medium had introduced a new visual language that was intimately tied to the modern world. Moholy-Nagy wrote in 1936, “The illiterates of the future will be ignorant of the use of camera and pen alike.” The school was founded on this idea, but those who taught there expanded upon it in many ways. Harry Callahan began teaching there in 1946, and his approach used photographic forms to elucidate experience. In photographs such as Untitled ( 1996.291a-c ), he set up his equipment in one place on the beach and pressed the shutter as seaweed, pebbles, and other beach detritus passed through the frame. His camera’s intrusion upon this quiet and viscous moment becomes the cool serenity of the images, underscoring the camera’s ability to transform our experience of time. Other photographs, such as Eleanor, Chicago ( 1988.1161.2 ), highlight the metamorphosis that occurs when the camera intercepts emotionally charged space and processes it into abstract forms arranged on photographic paper.

Aaron Siskind, who began teaching at the Institute in 1950 at the invitation of Callahan, found analogues to photography’s tonal language in man’s impulse to make his mark on the world. He is best known for photographs of walls inscribed with calligraphic markings or tattered signs, as in Uruapan 11 ( 1991.1215 ), in which Siskind has noted the blotting-out of the natural world by a concrete wall. In Chicago ( 1991.1212 ), the wall is a dark, immutable presence onto which humanity’s passing fancies are inscribed. Siskind (who headed the photography program at the Institute of Design from 1961 to 1971) executes them in exquisitely printed, tonally subtle renderings that intertwine the literal and symbolic goals of the Institute’s photographic principles. One of Siskind’s and Callahan’s most well-known students was Ray K. Metzker ( 1990.1083 ), who translated the formal tenets of his mentors into a design vocabulary that reinvigorated the medium during the Pop era by investigating the photographic image’s role in the visual-cultural code of contemporary life.

Another related, but more mystical, school of thought in photography centered on the work of Minor White, whose early flirtations with documentary photography combined with his spiritual quest to produce work with a profound, metaphorical resonance. In early works, such as Nude, Portland, Oregon ( 1987.1100.498 ), White made the formal beauty of the body palpable, lending a sense of calm to the charged materiality of the subject. After World War II, White devoted his career to the concept of the sequence, which for him provided the best opportunity for the voice of the photographer to emerge: “With single images I am basically an observer, passive to what is before me, no matter how perceptive or how fast my emotions boil. In putting images together I become active, and the excitement is of another order—synthesis overshadows analysis. The poet says, ‘The line is given, the rest is up to me.’ Adapting this to photography, it reads, ‘When the images are given, sequencing is up to me.'” In White’s sequences, every photograph is meant to be individually appreciated as well as felt within its sequence. This made the last photograph in a sequence, like the one from Sequence 1967 ( 1995.563 ), bear a tremendous amount of weight, but the strength of White’s work carried it gracefully.

Also striking an independent note in American photography during the postwar period was Ralph Eugene Meatyard ( 67.543.29 ), whose compelling amalgamation of formal balance and unusual subject matter made his work instantly unforgettable. He photographed what seem at first to be familiar scenes in a normal, rural environment, but with a few peculiar elements inserted throughout—a creepy Halloween mask on a child’s face; a tattered, distressed-looking doll; a bird carcass hung on the wall, etc. The result leaves the viewer with an eerie sensation that pricks at his or her faith in the banality of normal life. Both White and Meatyard, although not directly connected otherwise, initiated photography’s metaphysical estrangement from the material world during the postwar era, carving out a space for the medium in contemporary art that continues to be inhabited today.

Hostetler, Lisa. “The Structure of Photographic Metaphors.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pmet/hd_pmet.htm (October 2004)

Further Reading

Travis, David, and Elizabeth Siegel, eds. Taken by Design: Photographs from the Institute of Design, 1937–1971 . Chicago: Art Institute, 2002.

White, Minor. Mirrors, Messages, Manifestations . 2d ed. Millerton, N.Y.: Aperture, 1982.

Additional Essays by Lisa Hostetler

• Hostetler, Lisa. “ Photography in Europe, 1945–60 .” (October 2004)
• Hostetler, Lisa. “ The New Documentary Tradition in Photography .” (October 2004)
• Hostetler, Lisa. “ Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) and American Photography .” (October 2004)
• Hostetler, Lisa. “ Group f/64 .” (October 2004)
• Hostetler, Lisa. “ Photography in Postwar America, 1945-60 .” (October 2004)
• Hostetler, Lisa. “ International Pictorialism .” (October 2004)
• Hostetler, Lisa. “ Pictorialism in America .” (October 2004)

Related Essays

• The New Documentary Tradition in Photography
• New Vision Photography
• Photography in Postwar America, 1945-60
• The Postwar Print Renaissance in America
• Abstract Expressionism
• Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) and American Photography
• Anselm Kiefer (born 1945)
• Daguerre (1787–1851) and the Invention of Photography
• The Daguerreian Era and Early American Photography on Paper, 1839–60
• Design, 1925–50
• Design, 1950–75
• Early Documentary Photography
• Geometric Abstraction
• Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986)
• Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004)
• Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
• Photography and Surrealism
• Photography at the Bauhaus
• Photography in Europe, 1945–60
• Photojournalism and the Picture Press in Germany
• Walker Evans (1903–1975)
• William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–1877) and the Invention of Photography

List of Rulers

• Presidents of the United States of America
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• 20th Century A.D.
• Abstract Art
• American Art
• Conceptual Art
• Gelatin Silver Print
• Literature / Poetry
• Modern and Contemporary Art
• Photography
• Photojournalism
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Artist or Maker

• Callahan, Harry
• Ellis, William
• Meatyard, Ralph Eugene
• Metzker, Ray K.
• Siskind, Aaron
• White, Clarence H.
• White, Minor

Online Features

• Connections: “Blood” by Jackie Neale Chadwick

The Philosophy of Photography

April 01, 2013

By Dawn Roe

Dawn Roe, photographer and assistant professor of studio art, discusses five books that expand how we think about—and understand—photography and photographs.

On Photography

Susan Sontag Still a seminal text in many photography courses, Sontag's essays on photography question our sometimes-passive response to the photographic image and challenge readers to consider their role in the process. In the book's opening essay, "In Plato's Cave," Sontag asserts that "photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire." At times critical of both photographs and photographers (meaning anyone who picks up a camera), her analyses bring forth important considerations that touch upon voyeurism, ethics in photojournalism, and personal/travel photography in relation to tourism and spectacle.

Camera Lucida

Roland Barthes This book, the last published before the author's death in 1980, serves as a meditation of sorts on our relationship to photographs and how we make sense of them in relation to our lives. It's an esoterically written long-form essay that takes the reader on Barthes' journey to determine why certain images are more poignant than others. Initially, he sets out to find an image of his deceased mother that seems to reflect her essential aspects. Locating this in an image of her as a young child that he dubs the "Winter Garden Photograph," Barthes begins his process of questioning. This text includes the noted discussion of "studium" and "punctum"–two terms that Barthes uses to distinguish between images that are competent and hold our general interest and those that demand our immediate attention, bringing us in closer to the image and provoking a more prolonged interaction.

On the Camera Arts and Consecutive Matters: The Writings of Hollis Frampton

Hollis Frampton

This compilation of the writings of Hollis Frampton offers a glimpse into the mind of this prolific photographer and filmmaker, whose life was sadly cut short in 1984. Deeply concerned with the larger histories of these mediums (and their relationship to one another), Frampton brings the work, methods, and philosophies of early practitioners into conversation with his own practice. Heavily interested in systems of language, Frampton often includes literary or textual references in his work. (He was known for his eloquent and intricately worded phrasing both in speaking and in writing.) Although these essays and notes may seem esoteric at times, a close and careful read is worthwhile, as readers will quickly find themselves as captivated as Frampton with his seemingly varied references, all leading back to the ™camera arts.

The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media

Walter Benjamin

While not necessarily a book about photography, Benjamin's writings remain essential to contemporary considerations of the medium. This volume is defined by the newly translated title of the oft-cited essay earlier known as "The Work of Art in the Age of Reproduction." The publisher's description states, "This book contains the second, and most daring, of the four versions of the `Work of Art' essay–the one that addresses the utopian developments of the modern media." As the title suggests, Benjamin was concerned with the technological implications attached to the dissemination of images in photographic form and what this meant for the "aura" of works of art, as well as how we might begin to understand photography as a distinctly reproductive medium. Although relevant at the time of their writing, these essays are now seen as particularly prescient in relation to rapid advancements in technology in the decades since, resulting in the abundance of photographic imagery we regularly encounter today.

The Nature of Photographs

Stephen Shore

Following up on John Szarkowski's The Photographer’s Eye , which provides a modernist, formal language of photography (i.e., the detail, frame, vantage point), Shore's book uses similar categories to help define essential aspects of the photographic image. An accomplished photographer and teacher, Shore seems to have written this book to serve as a starting point for thinking through his own work as well as to assist students and others interested in wading through the slippery surface of the photograph in order to find the meaning underneath. The Nature of Photographs provides both the reader and practitioner with criteria that can be applied to any photographic image–and is deliberately and specifically concerned with the inherent characteristics of this form of representation.

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LaToya Ruby Frazier Is Paying It Forward

She may be America’s foremost social documentary photographer, now with a survey at the Museum of Modern Art. “All I’m doing is showing up as a vessel.”

The photographer LaToya Ruby Frazier creating a self-portrait in Braddock, Pa., her hometown, at the site of a footbridge over the railroad. The bridge had been torn down, but she decided to make the portrait anyway. Credit... Gioncarlo Valentine for The New York Times

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By Siddhartha Mitter

Reporting from Braddock and Pittsburgh, Pa.

• May 8, 2024

A continuous high-pitched din — a bit whirring, a bit crunching — echoed over the Bottom, the residential sliver of Braddock, Pa., nearest to the industrial plants and the Monongahela River. It rose, indistinguishably, from the steel mill — the Edgar Thomson Steel Works, opened by Andrew Carnegie in 1875 and still operating — and the adjacent air separation plant, where gasses are piped into the mill or liquefied for shipment.

Also borne on the breeze was an unmissable acrid smell. It hung in the atmosphere on a Monday morning in April, over Washington Street. Not much was going on: Braddock, near Pittsburgh, had more than 20,000 inhabitants a century ago but now has fewer than 2,000. Still, some young people — Black, like four-fifths of the residents today — clustered around the Living Water Church, where a hearse parked outside indicated that a funeral was underway.

As I walked with the photographer LaToya Ruby Frazier — who grew up on Washington Street and made there the documentary work about her family, at once poetic and unflinching, that cemented her reputation — my nose and throat started to tingle.

“Oh yeah,” Frazier said. “The longer you’re here, the heavier it’s going to get.”

Braddock has a history of high levels of air pollution and respiratory disorders, as well as infant mortality. Pollution from the steel mill remains a public health concern: In 2022, U.S. Steel, which owns the plant, agreed to a $1.5 million fine and promised improvements in a settlement with the Environmental Protection Agency and county health authorities.

Frazier has the autoimmune disease lupus. “I shouldn’t be down here too long, because my health has been so adversely affected,” she said.

The smell thickened as we neared the factories. The gas plant occupies the site of Talbot Towers , the public housing complex where Frazier’s family lived when she was born, in 1982, and that was torn down in 1990. Across the street sits the brick husk of another church, where she attended Bible study. An inscription on its facade — “You must be born again! Of water and spirit” — has appeared in her photographs.

“It’s almost like an out-of-body experience, right?” Frazier said over the noise, as brightly painted coal tipper trucks turned into the factory gates.

“But this is what I felt and knew as a kid. I always had a feeling as a little girl that there were two realms. The physical realm — yes, we’re on Washington Street, walking toward the steel mill — but then there was the spiritual realm. That these spiritual forces were always surrounding me — just like the history.”

This weekend, Frazier’s survey exhibition, titled “ Monuments of Solidarity ,” opens at the Museum of Modern Art. At 42, she may be America’s foremost social documentary photographer now. Her work charts the experience of working-class people around the country as they face compounding challenges of deindustrialization, environmental degradation and inequality. Through it all, her hometown Braddock remains her best template for understanding the world.

She first made her mark with “ The Notion of Family ” (2001-14). It portrayed over many years her grandmother Ruby, who raised her; her step-great-grandfather, known as Gramps; and her mother, Cynthia, notably in jointly composed mother-daughter portraits. Autobiographical and interior, the work gradually opened to Braddock’s battered terrain and the local activists resisting its decline. It earned Frazier inclusion in the 2012 Whitney Biennial and a MacArthur “genius” fellowship in 2015.

After that, she widened her field. In “ Flint Is Family ” (2016-20), she chronicled over years how some residents of Flint, Mich., coped with the water crisis that began in 2014 when authorities switched the public supply to the polluted Flint River. It has yet to be resolved.

In 2019, she spent nine months with members of the United Auto Workers in Lordstown, Ohio, after General Motors abruptly announced the closure of its plant there. Her project, which began as a commission for The New York Times Magazine , expanded into “ The Last Cruze ,” an installation of photographs, video and text interviews of some 60 workers — diverse by race, gender and age — that premiered at the Renaissance Society in Chicago.

And during the pandemic, she spent weeks in Baltimore photographing Black and working-class community health workers who deployed in the city to connect a vulnerable population to medical and support services. “ More Than Conquerors ,” featuring dozens of these workers and in some cases their families, received the top prize in the Carnegie International exhibition in 2022.

Gathering these and other projects, the MoMA survey traces, for the first time in one place, Frazier’s journey toward this kind of civic polyphony. Her portraits of individuals or groups are collaboratively posed in homes, parks and workplaces. Accompanying them are extensive interviews that she conducts herself and excerpts, often at length, in her photo books and exhibition displays.

She opens space, as well, for grass-roots artists. In Flint, two poets, Amber Hasan and Shea Cobb , became her confidants and local entree. In a video Cobb, a school bus driver by day, delivers a forceful poem, then narrates Frazier’s images. In Lordstown, Kasey King , an auto worker and U.A.W. photographer, shot inside the plant — where Frazier was denied access — as the last Chevrolet Cruze moved through production. The slide show of those often emotional images, with King narrating, runs nearly one hour.

Frazier’s subject matter locates her in the engagé tradition that includes Lewis Hine, who photographed notably in Pittsburgh in the early 20th century; Dorothea Lange; Walker Evans; or one of her great inspirations, Gordon Parks. But her methods expand this canon, said Roxana Marcoci , the MoMA senior curator who organized “Monuments of Solidarity” with Caitlin Ryan, an assistant curator, and Antoinette D. Roberts, a curatorial assistant.

“Like Parks, she sees the camera lens as a radical tool for resistance,” Marcoci said. But by “centering on the act of looking after and listening to the people whom she is representing in her work,” Marcoci added, Frazier’s projects invite viewers to think alongside them, rather than regard them as subjects.

The survey is not a full retrospective; missing, for instance, is Frazier’s one overseas project, in 2017, with photographs and interviews of coal miners in Belgium’s Borinage region. But it includes her newest series, “ A Pilgrimage to Dolores Huerta ,” the labor and civil-rights leader, whom she interviewed in California last year.

Frazier and Marcoci have imagined each section of the exhibition as a “monument” to the people it includes, with photos and texts displayed on structures that recall, for example, an assembly line. “All I’m doing is showing up as a vessel,” Frazier told me, adding that she wants to “turn MoMA into a museum of workers’ thoughts.”

Braddock Explains the World

Talbot Towers is long gone. The house at 805 Washington Street, where Frazier lived with Ruby and Gramps, is gone. Braddock Hospital, where Ruby died in 2009, was closed by the regional hospital system in 2010 — depriving the town of medical services and its biggest employer — and then demolished, leaving no physical trace.

Such disappearances, Frazier pointed out, stem from decisions. “Nothing just collapses,” she said. “These things are done over time through policies, laws, rezoning and dispossession. And the erasure,” she added, “leads to the historical amnesia that my work tries to combat.”

On Washington Street, the junior high school that Ruby attended has stood empty and boarded up all Frazier’s life, she said. Television news painted Braddock as a danger zone. “‘Don’t drive through Braddock. Braddock is a ghost town.’ But I was being shielded and guided by my grandmother. I felt like this was home.”

When she began “The Notion of Family” — encouraged by Kathe Kowalski , her college mentor at Edinboro University in Pennsylvania to take on even the intimacies of her family’s ill health — she was trying to understand herself, and where she came from. But in the process, she said, she came to grasp how the town declined.

A rezoning map of the period, for instance, showed how residential housing came to be replaced by industry. It reclassified much of the Bottom, devaluing the property of Black homeowners. A discrimination case on behalf of Talbot Towers’ residents dragged on for years through consent decrees and partly executed settlements.

The announcement of the hospital’s closure shocked the artist, coming so soon after her grandmother’s death there. But she now had a framework for understanding it. The protests that followed, although unsuccessful , would play a pivotal role in her photographic work, motivating her for the first time to come out and document grass roots action.

The activists taught her about organizing and civil disobedience. “That’s when the work became plural,” she told me. “It was time to come outside. The personal was political now.”

After graduate school at Syracuse University, Frazier taught at Rutgers University and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She prefers not to say where on the Eastern Seaboard she currently lives. But when she says “home,” she means Braddock. “It’s important that you have to establish being from a particular place,” she said. “I certainly started here, and I continue.”

She makes a self-portrait whenever she is back — it’s her ritual. She invited me to follow her up the hill to an iron footbridge spanning the railroad track, at the top of Frazier Street. The name commemorates John Frazier (or Fraser), the Scottish settler who procured land from the Lenape Queen Aliquippa in the mid-18th century. The shared last name is likely a coincidence, but she finds it intriguing.

But the bridge was gone. It was torn down a few years ago, a neighbor said.

Frazier made the photograph anyway, holding a rolled-up map of Braddock from 1876. “The bridge is gone, and here I stand,” she said. “I’m using myself as a marker.”

“It’s important for people of color in this country to mark where you were,” she added. “Say the year, say the street, say the intersection, say the time of day. We have to be hypervigilant about saying we were in a certain place and time. Because they’ll say we weren’t.”

What she wants for the people she photographs, I realized, is what she wants for herself.

Ask people who appear in Frazier’s images how their trust was formed, and they speak of her personal rapport, her sincerity, her blue-collar roots, even divine intervention. “She’s a bridge over troubled waters,” said Cobb, the poet in Flint, who with Hasan has joined Frazier on panels around the country.

“Our souls touched,” said Frances Turnage, a retired auto worker in Lordstown who, when Frazier arrived, was still active with the union women’s group. But most important, Turnage added, Frazier had simply shown up. “She cared enough to want to tell our stories. We appreciated it because our voice was never heard, our concerns never recognized. Nobody came down to our level.”

Sandra Gould Ford met Frazier at a Pittsburgh conference in 2015. In the 1980s, Ford had worked at the Jones & Laughlin steel mill in Pittsburgh before it shut down. There, breaking the rules, Ford made photographs : Workers on the coke oven, decommissioned furnaces, office bulletin boards. She interviewed co-workers, collected company documents and wrote her memories of the job.

“It blew me away,” Frazier said. “She’s like a national treasure.” In an uncanny connection, Ford had lived briefly in Talbot Towers when Frazier was born.

In 2017, the two women presented an exhibition, “ The Making of Steel Genesis ,” at the August Wilson Center in Pittsburgh. It joined Ford’s factory images with new portraits of her by Frazier, who added cyanotypes of documents. In the MoMA installation, an audio remembrance by Ford plays in the gallery.

Frazier led the fund-raising for the August Wilson Center project. It’s her duty, she told me, to redirect resources from galleries and collectors, where she has influence, to people that become part of her projects. Especially for local working artists, who are often overlooked.

In Ford’s dining room in the Homewood section of Pittsburgh, the two women reminisced about how Frazier spent days scanning Ford’s photographs while Ford worked at her typewriter.

“In every community there are people like Sandra,” Frazier said. “But people take folks for granted when they’re born and raised from a place.”

Ford interjected. “That’s why I told LaToya, it was good that she left Pittsburgh.”

“It’s hard to hear that,” Frazier replied. Then she added: “But Sandra is the reason someone like me comes back, paying it forward.”

“Monuments of Solidarity” isn’t just a celebration, Frazier told me. It’s also a challenge to “show up for other people.”

She went on: “The people that are in all these valleys, they already have the power. I’m just saying, ‘Hey y’all, look at this amazing power, look at this amazing light.’”

Siddhartha Mitter writes about art and creative communities in the United States, Africa and elsewhere. Previously he wrote regularly for The Village Voice and The Boston Globe and he was a reporter for WNYC Public Radio. More about Siddhartha Mitter

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Photo Essay: My Spring 2024 Semester at CDS

Hi there! My name is Isabella Boncser, and I'm currently a sophomore in the six-year Accelerated BS/DPT program in Boston University's Sargent College (2026/2028). In addition to my academic pursuits, I have a passion for photography, and am currently the CDS student event photographer. I love capturing student life within CDS, whether that be taking pictures of students studying in the building on a rainy day, attending 24-hour civic tech hackathon on the 17th floor, or a faculty and staff appreciation event. Over this past semester, I had the honor of working with the CDS communications team, led by Maureen McCarthy , director, and Alessandra Augusto , events & communications manager.

I was asked to highlight some of my best and brightest work from the semester. The following images were captured this spring, and are some of my favorite images. They showcase the versatility of student life within CDS and BU Spark !

BU Spark! hosted a Tech For Change Civic Tech Hackathon , where students spent 24 hours at BU to developed a new project with teamwork and technical skills at the forefront. I had the opportunity to meet students from 19 different schools, all of whom spent (literally) day and night on the 17th floor of the Center for Computing & Data Sciences working together and using their hacking skills to create a difference in the world. Pictured here are two students celebrating after discussing their individual projects and asking for some advice regarding their presentations.

CDS serves as home for a variety of people and their furry friends! This image shows Miss Belle, the beautiful English Setter (who loves birds) who shares office space with her owner, Chris DeVits, CDS Director of Administration.

The Center for Computing & Data Sciences truly has a place for everyone at BU. The main level has become the campus living room, where students can meet to chat over coffee, or catch up on emails on the staircase. On a rainy day, students can find a " cozy corner " and focus on their work in a relaxing environment. This is a glimpse of the "sit steps" - the large staircase with over two dozen conversation spaces that has become popular for students to relax and get some work done between classes.

You may have heard people refer to the Center for Computing & Data Sciences as the "Jenga Building" because of its Jenga-like architecture. The building, which is home to the Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences, the Departments of Mathematics & Statistics and Computer Sciences, and the renowned Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computation Science & Engineering, embraces its beautiful yet fun architecture while focusing on community! Next time you are craving a fun study break, join the CDS Events Team for a night of Jenga and try some delicious popcorn!

Driving down Commonwealth Avenue, the building stands out amongst its peers and shines bright along the Boston city skyline. Illuminating the streets during dusk, the building is one of my favorites the photograph. The 17th floor is home to many events hosted by CDS faculty and staff, as well as the general BU community.

The students pictured had been working tirelessly on their TFC Civic Tech Hackathon project. This photo exemplifies teamwork, collaboration, and partnership. Although students were working on their projects for 24 hours on the 17th floor of CDS, they were all smiles for the camera during final presentations!

Yoga at the Top of BU has become a staple for students to come and enjoy a one-hour yoga session. The class is open to all students across BU, and is a great way to take a study break and get your body moving. If you are a zen master, or have never taken a yoga class before, come join us for the next session!

The BU Spark! team gathered for a group picture during the Civic Tech Hackathon which took place on the 17th floor in February. Over the Spring 2024 semester, I've had the pleasure of getting to know the ambassadors from each track, and their passion for their work within the BU community is truly inspiring. BU Spark! hosts numerous events, talks, and community-building programs like Cookie O'clock, town halls, and much more. Visit the BU Spark! space on the second floor to learn more about their involvement on campus!

Computational Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences ( CHASS ) hosted a variety of tutorials ranging from "An Analysis on Emerson's Work" to large language model discussions throughout the Spring 2024 semester. These sessions are a great way to learn about the data science industry and how your skills will be used in the real world. Check out the CHASS video tutorial library on YouTube .

I am heading to Dublin, Ireland to live and study abroad for the Fall 2024 semester! I am so thankful to Maureen McCarthy who gave me the opportunity to work with and celebrate the CDS community. I would also like to shoutout Sebastian Bak (QST'25) who recommended the position to me, and spoke so highly of the CDS community!

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