ANNIE GRIFFITHS SPEAKS TONIGHT, TUESDAY MARCH 24TH @ 7:30, SU's HENDRICKS CHAPEL, FREE TO PUBLIC
A National Geographic Photographer who’s focused her camera on the plight of poor women across the world speaks at Syracuse University Tuesday night as part of the University Lectures series. Her photographs developed into a project that's helped others called The Ripple Effect.
Annie Griffiths remembers first being enamored with photography in college. She quickly saw her camera as a way to tell stories. As a newspaper photographer in rural Minnesota, she remembers covering the impacts on farming and farm families…as well as very personal stories of the people. That led her to National Geographic.
“I was one of the first women there and by far the youngest photographer. So I pretty much kept my head down trying to make sure they didn’t figure out that I couldn’t do it (laughs).”
But she did it well enough…traveling to 150 countries to shoot.
Griffiths remembers being in gender –segregated countries where she had a chance to tell the stories of women, who otherwise didn’t get much attention. She recalls a life changing picture she took of a woman in a Kenyan refugee camp.
“A lovely young Somali woman laying on this cracked earth with her baby, who was not doing well. And I took the picture and as I took it I had one of those, you know a moral crisis. What am I doing; there’s 70,000 people in this camp. She’s never going to get out.”
But a couple years later in a Virginia refugee center with an aid worker, she came on that photo – and that story – once again.
"And I looked at it and said, ‘wow that looks familiar’. He didn’t know I took the picture. He turned to me and said, ‘oh yeah, and she’s doing great.’”
Griffiths calls that one of many epiphanies that her photography could help. That led her to create Ripple Effect to document the plight of poor women around the world.
“…shining a light on programs that empower women and girls, things that are innovative and sustainable. We’re very solution focused. We’re also very interested in this added burden of climate change which impacts women far more than anybody else.”
They’ll shoot pictures and video of an organization or project that’ has proven success – both to help them grow and also to share with others who face the same challenges. Griffiths will talk about her journey as a photographer, as well as Ripple Effect tonight at 7:30 in S-U’s Hendricks Chapel.
