Member Open House: Racial Injustice in America

For this past week’s Zoom Open House, we teamed up with long-time member photographer David W. Johnson and his organization True Chicago to have a conversation about racial injustice in America. Our guests included photographers Tonika Johnson and Marcus Smith, Google creative director Julian Gilliam, and Dorian Rushing, senior director of Hawkeye Agency. The video of that conversation can be viewed below.

Everyone spoke powerfully about their personal experiences and observations. The video goes for over an hour but is worth every minute.

One thing you should be aware of is that we got Zoombombed about 30 minutes in, and we had to cancel that call and start another. As luck would have it, I then lost internet and got shut out of the end of the meeting, thankfully one of our staff members was able to finish the recording. As ugly and upsetting as that brief episode was, I decided to leave some of that in the video for all to see. It was a bit of an eye-opener for me. We will be taking a more sophisticated approach to security next time. Watch the entire meeting below.

As valuable as talking about social justice is, Wonderful Machine is committed to proactively doing social justice as well — both in terms of hiring staff members and of selecting, nurturing, and creating opportunities for photographers who might otherwise get overlooked. If you’d like to share your thoughts about this, join us at our next Open House or email me at [email protected].