3 Questions for...

Sight: What role do you see social documentary photography playing in today's world? Has its influence or scope changed?

Ken Light: I have come to strongly believe that we documentary photographers have, unfortunately, moved from changing the world to holding witness to the things around us.

I think if we look at the history of documentary photography we see many early photographers whose work influenced popular opinion. Photographers such as Lewis Hine with his child labor photographs; Jacob Riis and his images of the Mulberry Bend slum in New York. But remember, we had no TV, no Life Magazine, no Internet.

These images were often revelations to the people who saw them and they acted directly and responded politically and socially. Today, the response is generally muted and individual. Sometimes, in recent memory, an accidental image has created opposition or reaction: Eddie Adams' Vietnam images, which horrified the American public and of course were quite accidental. The recent famine images of Somalia, as well. I would say in cases like these, the photographers haven't set out to change the world, or sometimes even to witness. They have literally fallen into an assignment that explodes before them and often becomes bigger than them.

Sight: What made you interested in social documentary photography?

Ken Light: Looking back at my work over the last 25 years, I realize that I have largely been influenced by my own experiences from the world around me. This partly can be linked to having been draft age in 1969, and having been an activist during my early college years. When my photography connected to my own world, it gave me a voice and it gave the people and events a voice.

This connection to the world has been sustained through these years. There is much to see and much that needs to be seen. Given the current trends in media mergers and in personality journalism, this type of work seems to be needed more than ever.

Sight: What's next?

Ken Light: I am completing my project on death row inmates and I've written a book on documentary photography. I have been fishing around in a a few different directions, photographically, but I wouldn't say I have a firm fix on where my camera will head next.