Identifying and Planning Advocacy

Social justice advocacy requires planning as well as passion. But remember, you’re not in it alone! In this lesson, you'll harness information about your community's assets to identify opportunities for advocacy and begin to plan.

Key questions in this lesson include:

• What are the opportunities for advocacy in my community?
• Who can help with my goals?
• How do I create a plan for advocacy that is doable and has a reasonable chance of success?
• How can my photography add to the effort of advocacy?
• Where do my identity and my work as a photographer fit into the plan?

Look at the image shown here. Or, download the image in the Resources section.

Questions for Discussion:

• What do you notice first about this image?
  • What do you notice about the artwork shown?
  • What do you know about Trayvon Martin?
  • What does it mean to you that the photo shows both a Justice for Trayvon Martin poster and other objects that seem to situate the scene in the Los Angeles Latinx community?
• What compositional and photographic elements do you notice, and why?
  • How is the photo framed? (The image uses a landscape aspect ratio and includes no people, only ephemera and the wall.)
  • What other compositional elements did the photographer use?
  • Are there any other artistic traditions that this photograph brings to mind?
• Do you think the photographer has a message with this photograph?
• Do you get the sense that the photographer came upon this scene or staged it in some way? Would you consider the photo as a collaboration in some way?

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About the Photographer and Subject

Grecia Carey Ortega began taking photos in middle school with her dad’s camera and credits her time in the Getty Unshuttered Program as an opportunity to learn more of the technical skills. “I tend to focus on telling stories, whether it’s my own or others’, about love, trust, forgiveness, and other themes. I use a lot of symbolism or the materials I have around me that have influenced me or reflect what I want to showcase in my photos.”

Now that you’ve looked at how a student photographer used their photograph to both document their community and call for advocacy, let’s look at an example from the Getty collection. How do professional photographers find and create opportunities for advocacy?

Look at the image shown here. Or, view the image on getty.edu. Read the caption to situate the photograph in time and place.

Questions for Discussion:

• What do you notice first about this image?
• What do you notice about the setting, background, and foreground?
• What compositional and photographic elements do you notice, and why?
  • How is the photo framed?
  • What other artistic choices did the photographer make?
  • What does the use of black-and-white do?
• Do you think the woman’s action is a successful example of advocacy in the form of protest?
• What do you feel are some of the messages of this photograph?
• Do you think the photographer was undertaking advocacy with this work?

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About Leonard Freed

Born in New York to working-class Jewish parents, Leonard Freed (1926-2006) focused his photography on discrimination. In the 1950s he depicted a range of communities: Jewish settlers in Amsterdam, Holland, African Americans in the US, and Asian immigrants in England. His coverage of the civil rights movement gave him the opportunity to travel with Martin Luther King, Jr., and he produced the book Black in White America in 1968. “Ultimately photography is about who you are,” he once said. “It’s the seeking of truth in relation to yourself. And seeking truth becomes a habit.”[1]

View Leonard Freed photographs in the Getty collection.

For the following exercise, you will need to have a societal cause or issue that is important to you in mind. It can be an issue that you have done extensive research on and are already engaged with, or something you have always been curious about. In this exercise, you will take the big step of creating a plan of advocacy.

You will use a step-by-step approach to planning your advocacy, and identify and photograph a community partner.

Use the first page of the Statement of Purpose and Inventory of Assets Organizer to capture your ideas. [See Resources section.] Individually or in small teams, first, write a statement of purpose for your advocacy around your chosen issue. Next, list the available resources around the advocacy opportunity. You may want to jump into creating your advocacy plan right away. However, pausing to consider your assets and using photography to solidify your community partnership are important steps that strengthen your advocacy plans and remind you that you’re not alone in the work.

Next, set out your goals for advocacy. These goals are not a detailed plan of action, but a chance to identify what is doable. Use the second page of the Statement of Purpose and Inventory of Assets Organizer as a place to capture your ideas. The organizer follows the SMART framework, a planning tool used in settings such as business, the arts, nonprofits, and academia. In this context, “SMART” is an acronym that stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based. It is meant to offer a structure for setting objectives.

Discuss your Statement of Purpose and Inventory of Assets with your teacher or your class in order to sharpen your ideas. Focus on people and organizations identified as community agents of change.

Questions for Discussion:

• What opportunities for partnership exist?
• How can you help to further mutual goals?
• How will you start conversations about potential partnerships with individuals or organizations?

Review photographic elements such as framing, perspective or angle, foreground and background, and presence or absence of a subject, as well as the subject’s position and pose. The related photography skill videos listed under Resources also provide quick skill refreshers. Think about how you will apply these skills and understandings.

Review your resource inventory to choose who or what to showcase, and explain why you think this subject would be a good partner.

Next, take a portrait (broadly defined) of a person or organization in the community who is a possible partner.

Continue your practice at home and in your neighborhood, taking the opportunity outside of class to reach out to potential community partners.

Sharing your work can feel vulnerable, so creating a safe space for sharing is important for this exercise. In small groups or with a partner, share one to three of your photographs. You may choose to speak about your intention with the photograph(s), or not. Alternatively, this exercise can be done on your own as an individual reflection.

Consider the following questions as you look at each others' photographs and think about what it was like to make them. As you discuss them with your peers, think about ways you can share positive feedback with them.

Questions for Discussion:

• What is the first thing you notice about the photograph?
• What works artistically in the photograph?
• What story is the photographer telling about the community partner?
• What do you think is the photographer’s point of view on the community partner? Is the photographer documenting or advocating?
• Where do you see yourself in relationship to your community partner?
• What part are you most proud of, and why?
• What would you do differently next time?