Artist Lecture - Barbara Davidson

Barbara Davidson is a photojournalist for the Los Angeles Times who recently came and lectured at UNR on March 29. She was being presented with Frank McCulloch Courage in Journalism award for her photo series called “Caught in the Crossfire”. The photo series chronicled Los Angeles gang violence, but showed the subjects of her photos were the families that were not directly affiliated with gangs, yet were still effected by gang violence. Her photos told a powerful story about the people in Los Angeles, and how normal the gang violence is for them, it’s almost a way of life. The photos were done in all black and white, and showed portraits of people, a lot of the time children, who had been injured by stray bullets, or families that had lost loved ones. She said that the subjects she photographed were more than willing to help her with her project, because the families want to talk about their loved ones because they recognize that they are often forgotten but the community. Davidson decided to do this piece because she felt that this was a story that most times goes unreported in Los Angeles. She says she realizes that her story is not easy to talk about or to listen to, but it is an important story to needed to be told. “It’s really hard to tell these kinds of stories, which is why many people don’t,” said Davidson. To see Davidson’s work please visit www.LATimes.com/victims