#10 Documenting Chicago's Persistent Gun Violence with E.

Jason Wambsgans

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Communication explores the impact of these changes across the communications landscape
and finds new ways to navigate forward.

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_working on the cutting edge of these global changes to campus to discuss the impact of the
21st-century media revolution with students, faculty, and staff. Find our podcasts, interviews,
and talk recordings on our website.

Damian Radcliffe (00:03):

Hello and welcome to the Demystifying Media podcast. I'm Damian Radcliffe, the Carolyn S.
Chambers professor of journalism at the University of Oregon, and today, I'm joined by Jason
Wambsgans, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer at the Chicago Tribune, and a 2018
journalist in residence here at the University of Oregon. And I'm also joined by my colleague,
Torsten Kjellstrand, professor of practice and esteemed photographer himself, also here at the
University of Oregon. Jason and Torsten, welcome to the podcast.

Jason Wambsgans (00:29):

Thank you.

Torsten K. (00:29):
Thank you.

Damian Radcliffe (00:31):

Jason, let's start at the beginning and if we may, what first turned you on to photography?

Jason Wambsgans (00:37):

There's a magic to it. I was probably eight, nine, 10 years old. I began playing with cameras. I
was always an artistic kid, drawing, painting. In the summers my mom would buy my sister and
I rolls of Super 8 film. We'd make little films and it's just something I've always done. At the
same time, I was a very quiet kid and I would just observe things and think about people, my
mom would take us to the mall and I would just stand there and observe people and make up
little narratives about what they might be doing or thinking.

Jason Wambsgans (01:20):

It's just something I've always done.
Damian Radcliffe (01:21):
And there a point in your life where you decided you wanted to be a photographer?

Jason Wambsgans (01:26):

I think I always kind of was a photographer. It was much later until I thought, this might be
something I could do to make money. I studied art, I was interested in filmmaking and I reached
a point kind at the end of college where I thought, oh, I'll give this a shot.

Damian Radcliffe (01:47):

Okay, and obviously you talk to Tom about doing Super 8 film and doing not just still images but
moving images and we've seen a lot of photographers develop that skill set. Is that part of the
natural evolution that you're seeing of your trade, that people are needing to bring those
different elements into play? Or does it just give you a different side to the experience and the
opportunity to express the stories that you want to tell?

Jason Wambsgans (02:16):

When there's opportunities to utilize other disciplines, to marry them with a still photograph, it
can be very powerful. Beautiful sound mixed with photographs I think are just a very powerful
combination. The economic reality these days, video's not optional. It's something that a still
photographer, in my experience, is absolutely required to do and it can be not easy to switch
back and forth at the same time, but like I said, it's just the way things are now.

Damian Radcliffe (02:56):

Can you talk a little bit about that translation? Like what are the in the medium that make that
difficult or not difficult?

Jason Wambsgans (03:03):

For the different disciplines to communicate effectively, they kind of rely on different ways of
interacting with the subject, you're observing different parts of a situation and you're thinking
different as you're trying to gather those, And it can be jarring to try and switch back and forth.

Jason Wambsgans (03:21):

And for me personally, it feels like I know that still photographs are my most articulate voice
and that voice has compromised a little bit when I'm, Oh, I need to get video too.

Damian Radcliffe (03:36):

And do you separate and delineate between those tasks? So you'll go to an event or an
occasion very much with the intention of just doing still or just doing video? Or will you
potentially flip between the two?

Jason Wambsgans (03:48):

What I found works the best for me is I'm going to concentrate on the stills unless of course
there's something that just presents itself that is overwhelmingly appropriate for video, but I'm
generally going to concentrate on the stills and then try and come up with almost a conceptual
solution that I can backtrack in, apply video after the fact to enrich the stills and provide some
kind of almost a conceptual arc that will tie everything together.

Damian Radcliffe (04:16):

Gotcha. No, that makes sense, and Torsten, is that you work in a similar kind of way?

Torsten K. (04:19):
When I worked for a newspaper, I did a very similar thing. I focused on the stills because Jason
said that's his most articulate voice. I think that really rings true for me as well and stills are so
fragile that if that isn't what you're doing, they fall apart. The newspapers that I worked for, the
standard for video was pretty low so you could kick out an okay video. When I make films, I do
not try to also do stills, like doing something that's good enough to make a film and then
occasionally doing ... I'm just not smart enough to do both of those at once.

Damian Radcliffe (05:06):

Gotcha. No, that makes sense.

Jason Wambsgans (05:07):

One thing though, I have noticed just recently, just in the last like maybe two years, some of the
younger photographers that are coming onto our staff at the Tribune are the first
photojournalists I've seen who are pretty adept at doing both and it's really interesting to me
that their working process, their minds, they haven't been conditioned the way mine was
where I'm continuously seeing everything and my eyes are blinking at 250th of a second when I
don't have a camera. They're able to make that transition a lot easier than I'm able to and I find
that to be very interesting.

Damian Radcliffe (05:49):

Is that one of the biggest changes that you've seen during your time in the industry? The other
two big stories that play, one is the kind of decimation of the newspaper industry that we've
seen over the last two decades; 20,000 jobs disappearing. And then of course the digitization of
photography, which for a lot of people has changed the way in which they work.

Jason Wambsgans (06:10):

Absolutely. So I've been at the Chicago Tribune 15 years and the change has just been very
profound in ways that I think are unique to a paper that size. And we're still fortunate, we still
have a fairly big photo department and that allows me a lot of time to pursue these longer
stories, but in that 15 years, yeah, we were doing digital. I was still shooting film for maybe the
first four or five of those years, for special projects for the Tribune Sunday Magazine or
something like that. The resources that they had back then were mind boggling. Opportunities
for travel, telling international stories. That's been gone for a long time. But the digital
pressures and the acceleration of the digital pressures are pretty unrelenting. They want
pictures before they happen. They want video from every story before it happens. And it can be
pretty intense.

Damian Radcliffe (07:28):

Okay. So given what you were just saying about how the landscape is changing, what are the
advice that you would give for our students and for listeners in terms of things that they should
be considering as they move into this profession?

Jason Wambsgans (07:41):

On one hand you have to be able to just diversify your skills to such a extreme that it's tricky, so
I have to be prepared to shoot video every day. I'm prepared to record high quality audio every
day. I'm prepared to light portraiture. I'm prepared to light a video shoot. I carry a bag for these
crime scenes. I photograph a lot of food, so I have macro lenses and reflectors and extension
tubes. So technically there's a lot of things, but I have to be able to switch gears between all
those disciplines in my head too. There's a difference between photographing a homicide scene
and making a portrait of a CEO. So you have to be able to juggle those kinds of things, and in
the face of that you need to be able to focus on the essentials of storytelling and to be able to
quickly get somebody's trust and quickly tell their story while you're juggling all these external
variables, have a good grip on the essential storytelling skills.

Damian Radcliffe (09:00):

And do you think those essential storytelling skills are constant?

Jason Wambsgans (09:04):

Yeah, they shouldn't change. They'll never change.

Torsten K. (09:07):
Can you talk a little bit about that? Like what are the fundamentals? One of the things that's
been striking to those of us who've heard you talk through the last couple of days here at the
school of journalism and communication is the depth of your reporting. What are relationship-

Damian Radcliffe (09:24):

And the way you've developed that trust with subjects in highly, highly personal moments to
get these really intimate portraits and stories, and I think understanding that process is
incredibly valuable for us.

Jason Wambsgans (09:38):

The first and most basic thing is just approaching people in a confident but respectful manner.
Oftentimes I'm certain that this is going to be the worst moment of a person's life. I'm
approaching them. So just being respectful, not cocky, not arrogant, but just respectful and
exuding just a calm vibe is an important thing. It's very important to make my intentions clear in
a very direct way. Why I'm interested in this, what's expected of them. This is the newspaper. If
you talk to me, this will be in the newspaper. So I just want to have everything be up front, so
there's no weird feeling and never be timid. That's maybe the most important part of this is if
you project a fear or uneasiness, subconsciously that's insulting to that person and that gives
them reason to think, Oh, this transaction gives me reason that this person shouldn't be afraid
of me. so just put the person at ease and be honest. That's the basis for everything.

Damian Radcliffe (10:59):

Given that we are operating in a news climate where fake news and criticism of the mainstream
media is all the rage. Is that something that you have seen permeating into the communities
that you're working with? Has your dynamic with them changed over the course of the last year
to 18 months?

Jason Wambsgans (11:17):

These neighborhoods are so isolated economically and their access to technology and ideas and
the media, it's a bit of an abstraction, I think in a lot of these neighborhoods. I know the idea of
the Chicago Tribune has definitely become an abstraction to vast swaths of the city. Do people
know what a newspaper even is in some places? And is there any delineation between the
Chicago Tribune and the Chicago police department and to some people's minds. So in a way it
just comes back to the way I approach someone and the way that I interact with them and the
respect that I show them that. That's what the basis of our interaction is going to come to.

Damian Radcliffe (12:10):

And I know when we were talking earlier, there were some important questions around
motivation and the value and importance of the stories that you're doing and trust, and I know
you wanted to ask a bit about that.

Torsten K. (12:21):
At the risk of being rude, I think the basic question is why do you do this? What do you hope
comes from it and what do you hope your community comes from it? But really.

Jason Wambsgans (12:31):

Well, living in Chicago and being a journalist in Chicago and looking at these issues, these
profoundly complicated issues that they're built of policy and legislation and things that have
taken place over 50, 60, 70 years. These huge forces at work in these people's lives. I wouldn't
be naive enough to believe that some photographs and some words in any way could change or
affect those powers, but the ability to find one person and share their experience with this
other group of people that make up the other side of the city of Chicago, that's the power of
photography.

Jason Wambsgans (13:24):

For me to be able to place someone in another person's shoes and give them the possibility to
empathize with that person's plate. That's, to me, the point of doing this work.

Torsten K. (13:37):
And do you have any indications of how well that's working? What is the feedback from the
community that you know about?

Jason Wambsgans (13:44):

The best way I can gauge that is letters, emails, responses from the reader's, responses from
the people we cover. That's extremely important, that we tell these stories in a way that is
absolutely true to the communities that we're covering. That's a huge responsibility and it's
always extremely gratifying to hear from readers who live in essentially a different world who
say thank you so much for showing us, that this even exists.

Damian Radcliffe (14:20):

Given that, that there isn't that kind of relationship with media and a lot of your work is about
giving a voice to the voiceless and shining a light on these communities that have arguably been
overlooked by media, by politicians and so forth. What are some of the biggest misconceptions
about those communities that many people might have? I'm thinking particularly against the
kind of political climate where arguably the situation around gun violence and gun crime in
Chicago has been heavily politicized over the course of the last couple of years?

Jason Wambsgans (14:54):

Yeah, it's not fair to politicize these issues because they're entirely complicated, profoundly
complicated things going over many generations. This endemic poverty and segregation. It's
just not fair to the people who are caught living in that, and a lot of times the dialogue infers
blame on the people who are stopped or caught in this cycle. That doesn't seem fair to me.

Damian Radcliffe (15:22):

And then one of the questions we had from several of our students was around some the ethics
of some of the work that you're doing. You've already touched about on the importance of
building trust and that honesty, but are there also times where you've said, actually this is a
story I won't cover it. Or this is a photograph I've taken and I'm not going to submit. Are there
times when you put down the camera because actually that feels inappropriate.

Jason Wambsgans (15:46):

Sure. Almost every situation is entirely different. So there's a lot of rapid calculation just
continuously going on in my head, in between myself and Peter Nikias, the reporter that I work
with in these situations. And I'm continuously making these calculations about, is there a
benefit to people seeing this picture? Is it presenting something new? Is it presenting
something in a different way, a different facet of this issue? Or is it simply reinforcing an
existing stereotype? So, another concern is if I raise the camera to my eye and take this picture,
is this going to increase the suffering of someone?

Jason Wambsgans (16:36):

Is this going to inflame the crowd? Is this going to endanger the police? Is this going endanger
or someone else, is this going to endanger myself? So that's a lot of rapid fire calculations based
on all these variables in a potentially chaotic situation. So there are times where if I think I can
make a picture without upsetting people, I'll take it. If I'm not sure about it and we can consider
later the usefulness of it.

Damian Radcliffe (17:06):

Are there any examples that you can think of where that's been the case?

Jason Wambsgans (17:10):

Yeah, there's been lots of pictures. We go to a lot of scenes in a night. If I have a sense that
would ruin these scenes, pete and I are communicating continuously, in non-spoken ways and
just whispering things back and forth, pointing things out, suggesting possible subjects,
suggesting possible narratives that we might derive from one of these scenes.

Jason Wambsgans (17:38):

If I feel like I'm confident that he's getting a lot of information and I can see that his wheels are
turning and he's going to be doing a lot of writing. I'll take more pictures because I know that
the cumulative effect of this package might be worth presenting some upsetting pictures. I
don't want to take pictures that are just upsetting for the sake of being upsetting. I think our
reporting has gone past that point and to a more nuanced terrain.

Damian Radcliffe (18:06):

But at the same time, is there an argument to say that we've become a bit more desensitized as
a society and that we sometimes need to shock our audience into realizing the realities for
many?

Jason Wambsgans (18:17):

Yeah. So sometimes there is a need for that. At the genesis of this project, four years ago, five
years ago. That was one of our intents was to show the other side of this divided city, what this
reality looks like in the streets, mothers in the streets with their sons covered in their blanket.
We wanted to portray this in a real, true, visceral way.

Jason Wambsgans (18:42):

And I think we effectively did that, but then after the second year I felt we need to move on and
show this in more subtle ways and explore all the different facets of how this ripples through a
community and tears it apart and touches everyone.
Damian Radcliffe (19:03):
And you've touched on some of your responsibilities to that community and the need for acting
with due care for the subjects that you are photographing. Some of the things you've described
and hair's gone up on the back of my neck just when you just described that scene just now,
how do you look after yourself in these situations?

Jason Wambsgans (19:24):

It's difficult. For me, the way I work, the way I see as necessary to carry out the responsibility of
doing this work. You can't be a passive observer. You have to absorb a bit of these feelings. If
I'm going to translate them photographically back through my camera, I have to take these
things on.

Jason Wambsgans (19:52):

So it's difficult. It has a cumulative effect. So generally I try and have different projects that I'm
working on photographically as maybe a therapeutic process. I photograph a lot of food at the
Tribune. I've done a bit of nature photography as just a therapeutic endeavor. My family looks
out for me, but it's a constant struggle.

Damian Radcliffe (20:20):

And Justin, what have been some of the key things you've taken away from Jason's time. He's
been on campus with us for a couple of days. We've been incredibly fortunate to have so much
of his time. What have been some of the things that you and the students you think have really
taken away from Jason's experience?

Torsten K. (20:38):
Well, I think there, there are a couple of things that come to mind. One is that I think are,
everybody who has seen the photographs and heard Jason talk, including the folks over at the
college of ed, got out of it what I think Jason hopes that the readers of the newspaper get out
of it, which is a sense of the complex complexity of this issue and also the realness of it. That it
is not abstract, that there are human beings who are connected to each other and to this
abstraction of gun violence in Chicago.

Torsten K. (21:19):
And then the second I think is what I've heard students tell me in between and around is that
they're amazed at what I asked about earlier. The depth of the reporting, the amount of time it
takes before you get to the clicking of a shutter. And I think this is something that all
photographers who do work that is deep get to at some point where the actual making of the
pictures, that's like the period at the end of the sentence or that's a little flash of joy you get.

Jason Wambsgans (21:57):

No, absolutely. Encompassed in that time that we spend is developing our understanding of the
situation, developing the trust of the people whose story we're telling.
Jason Wambsgans (22:15):
It's absolutely critical.

Torsten K. (22:17):
And I think it's one of the things that is really important and just to be very blunt about it, I
think we need in the school of journalism, we need to say things like this. If your goal was to
photograph dead people in Chicago, you could do that fairly easily with a scanner. If your goal is
to help elevate a level of understanding about what is behind those horrific events, then you
have to go about it the way Jason and Peter go about it. And sometimes I struggle as a teacher
to make that clear, especially in a 10-week term where on one hand we're asking students to
do great work, and on the other hand we're saying, yeah, but there's... In that sense it's like
newspaper work, right? Like, hey, go do this profound work and could you have it back by three
o'clock tomorrow afternoon? Can you talk a little bit about that?

Jason Wambsgans (23:09):

That is a reality of the situation. For me, I'm conscious of the idea that it feels like translation,
this job is translation. I'm translating the experience of one community in a way that can be felt
by a different community. Sometimes it has to be translated through the newspaper. That's the
format, so we have to make that negotiation. So the conversation is as pure from start to finish,
but yeah, we're producing content at the same time that needs to be published in a timely
fashion to keep this machinery running. So, it can sometimes be tricky to juggle this balance.

Damian Radcliffe (23:56):

And you mentioned this project now is five years old. The issues that you're covering aren't
going away any time soon, so how do you see this project evolving and what's the next kind of
arc for you professionally?

Jason Wambsgans (24:11):

Well, for this project, the last two and a half, three years we're always on the lookout. No
matter what we're reporting on, we're always scanning the periphery for solutions. People that
have a viable solution, and if we can present that and put that forward as, yeah, this is
happening, but look, people are actually accomplishing something on this. And just working on
those stories for me, that soothes this. You can be overwhelmed by the enormity of the
situation and the hopelessness of it. So that in a way heals us and allows us to keep going in the
reporting.

Torsten K. (25:04):
Can I push on that a little bit? You showed a series of photos of street parties and in one part of
your presentation you talk about that one of the dangers in focusing on this violence is that that
defines whole communities by the activity of a very small number of people in that community.
Do you have thoughts about how you might-
Jason Wambsgans (25:30):
Yeah, it's difficult, as our coverage has atrophied over the years, there are news holes changed
a lot of just neighborhood normal everyday stories from all parts of our coverage has really
deteriorated. So, there's a huge need to just tell everyday normal stories from these
communities, and it's tricky because we're too old right now to be telling these other stories. So
it's important to try and find more of a balance.

Damian Radcliffe (26:11):

Great. Okay. Well, I'm conscious that we could talk all day, but there are many other demands
on your time whilst you're here, so it just remains for me to thank my guests Jason Wambsgans
and Torsten Kjellstrand for the joining us today. You'll be able to see Jason's video and other
materials from his time here at the University of Oregon on our website, which is
demystifying.uoregon.edu. That's demystifying.uoregon.edu and in the meantime, thanks once
again for listening. We'll see you next time.