For as long as the camera has been invented, amateurs and master photographers alike have not only taken photographs for artistic value or to capture beauty.  Many people take and share photographs to send a message or to advocate about a certain issue.

One of the most famous examples of this in photography was Dorothea Lange’s photograph of a mother and children during the Great Depression.  She wanted to illustrate how average families in America were struggling greatly and facing extreme poverty.  She wanted some political action to take place in order to bring the nation out of the depression.  Lange used photography as a means to express this idea as it was published and shared nationally.

In previous years, the biggest advocacy project I did for photography was regarding the environment.  I did a project advocating the amount of water bottles that the United States consumes per year.  My photographs were posed portraits of people surrounded by dozens of empty plastic bottles who seemed to take no notice to them in order to illustrate people’s ignorance to this issue.

For my position paper for this class, I have decided to write about repealing the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” laws which currently inhibit gay people from being open about their sexuality in the military.  Especially since same-sex marriage has been legalized, I strongly believe military personnel should feel comfortable in being able to disclose their sexuality.  I also want to do my advocacy project on this issue as well and would love to do a photography project as my means of providing my information and opinion.  So far, I only have a couple basic ideas, but I would love to have any gay men or women pose for me and let me paint words on them, something like “let me serve the nation as I am.”  I would also like to have an American flag somewhere in the images and I definitely want them to be in black and white.