"It’s absolutely imperative that the truth is documented.”

 Via El Pais

February 23, 2026

American photographer Carol Guzy, a four-time Pulitzer Prize winner, asserts that, in light of the brutal anti-immigration crusade being waged by the US government, the work of photojournalists ‘is more important than ever’

It was an unexpected flash of empathy. The woman’s husband had just been detained by immigration agents in a federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan, which has become the epicenter of the Donald Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in New York. Photographer Carol Guzy (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 69) saw the agents take the man away as his wife shouted, “Please, help me!” and their two children cried. Guzy decided to accompany the family to the exit. There, the woman realized she didn’t have her keys; with no way to return home, she broke down in tears again. A court security officer approached her to offer help and, faced with the scene, also began to cry. Through her own tears, Guzy captured the moment with her camera.

For the photographer, it is an image that radiates compassion at a time when people desperately need it. In the midst of an unprecedented crusade against immigration, launched by a president obsessed with carrying out the largest deportation in U.S. history, the work of photojournalists like Guzy has become, in her own words, “more important than ever” in her country’s history. With their cameras, they are building a historical record that is at once deeply alive and profoundly human, documenting the consequences of an immigration policy whose effects will be felt for decades to come. --click for full article

“It’s our challenge in the face of the disinformation being disseminated, both for us as photographers and for these brave, brave residents who are standing out there with their cell phones documenting, like Alex Pretti. It’s absolutely imperative that the truth is documented.”

"A Globe Trotting Pioneer"

 Via The Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD) Exposure Newsletter

February 19, 2026

Margaret Bourke-White/©Life Picture Collection

Courtesy of Monroe Gallery

Louisville Flood Red Cross Relief Station, Kentucky, 1936

Margaret Bourke-White was a pioneer in many ways: a founding member of LIFE magazine, she was also the publication’s first female photographer, and she photographed the magazine’s first cover in 1936 (of the massive Fort Peck Dam in Fort Peck, Montana). A globe-trotting photojournalist (who was played in films by both Candace Bergen and Farrah Fawcett), she became a successful photographer in many male-dominated areas of the field, including industrial photography. When she was all of 23 years old, she photographed the Otis Steel Mill in Cleveland, where she also photographed the city’s famous Terminal Tower. Her 1937 landmark book, You Have Seen Their Faces, with text by her then-husband Erskine Caldwell, documented the lives of shareholders and tenant farmers in the deep south with empathy and grace. After embedding with the Air Force during World War II, she was one of the first people to photograph the devastation of the concentration camps, and her photographs of Gandhi following the partition of India were some of the last photographs ever taken of him before he was assassinated in 1948. A selection of this remarkable body of work is on view through April 26 at Santa Fe’s Monroe Gallery of Photography.
-Jean Dykstra

Margaret Bourke-White/©Life Picture Collection

Courtesy of Monroe Gallery

Gandhi walking with close advisors and family members, India, 1946

Ryan Vizzions Photographed Renee Good Memorial Site Arson

 Via Minnesota Star Tribune

February 18, 2026

Someone doused Renee Good’s south Minneapolis memorial and a nearby pile of wood with gasoline and started a fire at about 9 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 17.

A fence was charred, and several items in the memorial were damaged, but the memorial site at 34th Street and Portland Avenue wasn’t burned down. No one was injured, Minneapolis police said.

Photojournalist Ryan Vizzions, 43, smelled gasoline from inside his van, which was parked near the memorial site.

“I looked out my windshield and I see orange,” he said. “My eyes lit up.”

Vizzions jumped out of the van after seeing the flames. Neighbors who live in the apartment building in front of Good’s memorial used two fire extinguishers to put out the blaze, he said.

Community members had covered the memorial site with a tarp earlier to protect it from the rain.

“We’ve been hypervigilant in our neighborhood and obviously everyone’s keeping an eye out all of the time,” said Wren Clinefelter, 23, who lives near the memorial. “So it’s definitely very disheartening to hear that someone would try and burn down a memorial for a woman who was killed in our neighborhood.”

Vizzions posted a video of the scene to his Instagram account.

More with video reporting via WCCO on Facebook

Photojournalists documenting Trump’s deportation forces play critical role, but face increasing state violence

Via Prism

February 18, 2026

"Masked federal agents have abducted anyone they suspect of being a migrant—from workplaces, houses, courthouses, schools, and streets. ICE has forced its way into people’s homes with battering rams, dragged a pregnant woman through the snow, taken children as young as five into custody, and killed American citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

And at every step, journalists have documented the rapidly escalating state violence—often at great risk to themselves. While covering ICE’s enforcement surge in Los Angeles, TV reporter Lauren Tomasi was live on air when a Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officer aimed his weapon directly at Tomasi at close range, hitting her with “nonlethal ammunition.” Photographer Nick Stern required emergency surgery after LAPD shot his thigh with a plastic bullet. In Chicago, an ICE agent shot a pepper ball into the parked car of reporter Asal Rezaei, and in New York, ICE agents shoved visual journalist L. Vural Elibol, causing a head injury that required emergency services.

Ryanne Mena, who covered the ICE raids for the Southern California News Group, was shot on June 6 in the left thigh with a pepper ball bullet. The following day, she was struck in the head with a rubber bullet and the reporter next to her was hit in the head with a tear gas canister. Mena, who has asthma, had difficulty breathing and bystanders helped the reporters flush their eyes with water.

“I spent the rest of that day with a grueling headache. I threw up later that night, and two days later I was diagnosed with a concussion,” said Mena, who noted that a half year later, her brain fog is just now starting to dissipate and that she continues to experience heightened anxiety.

In Minneapolis, freelance photographer John Abernathy was surrounded and tackled by immigration agents on Jan. 15. “They set off a flash bang and then tear gas,” he explained. “I was shot twice with pepper bullets in my leg. I was then surrounded by border police and taken to the ground where they sprayed me in the face with pepper spray. My face was on fire. My eyes were on fire. I was gasping and gagging. I ended up having multiple injuries from the pepper bullets, chemical burns in my eye, and abrasions from being taken down.”' --click for full article

"I asked journalists who have been covering the ICE raids in LA, Oakland, Chicago, and Minneapolis to share their advice on staying safe. Here’s what they said"

Inside the U.S. Immigration System with Nicolò Filippo Rosso - February 12, 2026

Via Seven Foundation

Since 2018, visual journalist Nicolo Filippo Rosso has been documenting migration across the Americas, photographing families across South and Central America as they make the difficult journey north to the United States in search of safety. By 2024, Nicolo reconnected with some in the United States. What they had imagined as the end of a dangerous journey had become a new cycle of fear and instability.

 

In the summer of 2025, Nicolo spent nearly every day inside the immigration courts of downtown Manhattan, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have detained numerous non-U.S. citizens attending court hearings. Many arrived under Temporary Protected Status or requested asylum at the border. They complied with the system, yet were still taken from the hallways, arrested, sent to distant detention centres, and placed on the path to deportation, either to their home countries or to third nations.

 

Hosted by Ron Haviv, the conversation will explore the deep divide in U.S. immigration policy, where demands for border control collide with calls for humanity, and discuss what effect these issues have on the democratic fabric of the country.

Register here

Visit Monroe Gallery At The Second Edition of Scottsdale Art Week March 19-22, 2026

Visit Monroe Gallery at the second edition of Scottsdale Art Week March 19-22, 2026. We will be located in booth G2, featuring a dynamic selection of photographs from Art Heals: The Jingle Dress Project by Eugene Tapahe. Also on exhibit will be a special selection of Tony Vaccaro's iconic photographs of Art and Fashion.

The four-Day International Art Fair Returns to WestWorld of Scottsdale This Spring With 120 Galleries From 15 Countries. With galleries from across the country and around the world converging and a slate of esteemed honorees ready to step into the spotlight, Scottsdale Art Week presented by Scottsdale Ferrari returns to WestWorld of Scottsdale March 19 – 22, 2026. It all kicks off with an Opening Night Vernissage Thursday, March 19, giving guests a glimpse of the art, awards, entertainment and cultural offerings awaiting them throughout the remaining three days of festivities.

The 2026 Opening Night Vernissage benefits Phoenix Art Museum, widely recognized as the preeminent and largest art museum in the Southwestern United States. The evening offers guests exclusive early access to view and acquire works on show ahead of the general public and will feature a fashion presentation of wearable art curated by Galina Mihaleva of Arizona State University’s FIDM.

Opening Night guests will also enjoy bars and pop-up restaurants in all four corners of the 120,000 square-foot North Hall of WestWorld, famous for annually hosting the Barrett-Jackson Collector Car Auction. They can also visit a Veuve Clicquot Restaurant & Bubble Bar and access a Stella Artois Sculpture Garden, the latter of which is available to Opening Night Vernissage attendees, exclusively.

More information here

I Was Arrested for Doing My Job as a Reporter. Who’s Next?

 Via The New York Times

by Georgia Fort

Ms. Fort is an independent journalist based in Minnesota.

February 5, 2026

"Journalism is a public service, and I am proud to be a public servant. Professional reporting, observing and documenting is not a crime. But the freedom to do so is at risk. In November alone, three journalists were hit with pepper balls or other less lethal munitions and subjected to chemical agents while covering an ICE arrest in St. Paul. One, a Minnesota Public Radio reporter, was taken away by ambulance. Cameras were rolling. Press credentials were visible but offered no protection. I interviewed the St. Paul chief of police about these attacks in December. He refused to acknowledge that the incidents had occurred, even though several journalists had filmed and photographed them, including me. I filed a Freedom of Information Act request a few days after the interview to obtain body-camera footage of the attack on these journalists. It was denied.

These incidents are not isolated. After the fatal shooting of Renee Good, the independent photographer KingDemetrius Pendleton was tear-gassed by federal agents and was apparently shot with a chemical munitions canister. The Star Tribune video journalist Mark Vancleave was pushed back into his car by federal agents after trying to report on an ICE arrest, which he was covering for The Associated Press. The KARE 11 anchor Jana Shortal was hit with a chemical irritant while reporting after the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti.

Having the right to film and document matters. Footage can disprove false accusations or confirm hard truths. It can exonerate or incriminate. Days after the church protest, Alex Pretti, an intensive care unit nurse, was fatally shot by ICE agents. In the minutes that followed, videos from multiple angles of the shooting were published online, and this allowed the public, the press and the authorities to review the evidence." --full article here.

Related: Free Speech in Deep Freeze

Today: Lessons from Minneapolis - Legal, safety and ethical considerations for photographers

 Via  Photographic Center Northwest

February 5, 2026

Lessons from Minneapolis

Legal, safety and ethical considerations for photographers

Join us Thursday, February 5, for a timely online panel discussion with photojournalists Nate Gowdy, David Ryder, Leah Millis, and Alicia Wagner Calzada, Deputy General Counsel for the National Press Photographers Association. Moderated by Josh Trujillo, photographer and educator, the conversation will examine safety in protest coverage, photographers’ rights, and the legal and ethical considerations shaping photojournalism in today’s political climate.

Panelists & Moderator include:

Alicia Wagner Calzada — Deputy General Counsel for the National Press Photographers Association, where she focuses on press freedom, First Amendment protections, and legal advocacy for journalists working in the field.

Nate Gowdy — Seattle-based photographer whose work examines American politics and identity through a documentary and fine-art lens. He is the author of INSURRECTION, a timestamped photojournalistic chronicle of January 6.

David Ryder — Seattle-based freelance photojournalist who has covered war, wildfires, natural disasters, and protest movements across the United States, and who has completed hostile-environment training.

Leah Millis — Washington, D.C.–based photojournalist and press-safety advocate whose reporting spans politics, international protest movements, war, immigration, and the rise of domestic extremism in the United States.

Josh Trujillo — Educator, photojournalist, brand storyteller, and ethical journalism advocate.

Register for Zoom here

Image of 5-year-old boy reminds us of the power of photography

 Via National Press Photographers Association

February 1, 2026

A single image can make us stop scrolling. Make us think and feel, confront us. But what are the types of images that have the power to do this? And can they provoke societal change, bend the arc of history? A widely published photo of a five-year-old boy on his way home from school in Minnesota — wearing a winter hat with bunny ears — hints at answers to these questions.

Whatever your view regarding the immigration debate, the can’t-look-away photo of Liam puts a face on America’s attempt at mass deportation. --click for full article

New Exhibit: Margaret Bourke-White Photojournalist

 Via Monroe Gallery

February 1, 2026

Margaret Bourke-White/©Life Picture Collection

Louisville Flood Red Cross Relief Station, Kentucky, 1936

Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is pleased to announce an exhibition of important photographs by Margaret Bourke-White. The exhibition dates are February 6 – April 25, 2026. (No opening reception)

Margaret Bourke-White was a pioneer for women and an icon in American photography. As a founding member of LIFE (she photographed the first cover), she became a world-famous symbol of globe-trotting photojournalism. And that she did it in a male world made her success even more spectacular. Her photos have proven to have a timeless appeal, continuing to influence viewers’ opinions not only about the subjects photographed, but also about the artist behind the camera and the times in which she lived.

Margaret Bourke White was one of the most famous and most successful photographers of her time. Her combination of intelligence, talent, ambition, and flexibility made her an ideal contributor to the new journalism that developed during the thirties. She was a woman, doing a man's job, in a man's world, from the foundries of Cleveland to the battlefields in World War II. She had a deep-rooted belief in an artist’s duty to change the world. Known to her Life colleagues as “Maggie the Indestructible,” Bourke-White documented some of the most pivotal moments of the 20th century and changed the face of photography, dramatically altering the influence of photojournalism by using a new technique, the photographic essay. Not only did she document many of the most significant events of the 20th century, she also put a human face to the tragedies and the injustices of the powerful. She showed that photographers could be brave, could influence public opinion, and could be strong women.

View the exhibition here.