Why movement photography must be participant work, not sightseeing | In conversation with David Bacon

David Bacon interrupts the polite fiction that photographers can stay neutral: “There is no such thing as objectivity. The criteria should be what is fair and accurate.”

That line lands early and stayed with me through this hour-plus conversation. David, who spent years as an industrial worker then as a union organizer before becoming a photographer and writer, treats movement photography as a political practice as much as an aesthetic one. He walked me through three linked commitments: truly listening to and learning from the people you photograph and their lives and struggles, using images as a tool to help build social movements, and mastering the craft so your pictures actually do the work you intend.

The photograph is part of the struggle

David says that what makes a photo revolutionary is as much about its relationship to movements and its use by them as what's in the image. He points to the famous Alberto Korda portrait of Che Guevara: Korda was a Cuban revolutionary who gave the movement an image it could use, and the image then took on a life well beyond the frame, becoming one of the most iconic images on Earth to this day. He also describes a longshore hiring-hall photograph taken by exiled radical German photographers in San Francisco: it didn’t become a global icon, but it energized a local union fight because it encapsulated the humiliation and injustice they felt every day trying to get work, and it sparked them to take collective action.

That distinction matters. A photograph becomes “revolutionary” not just by what’s in the frame, but also by how movements relate to it and deploy it. Bacon insists the photographer must be able to answer, in one sentence, why this picture matters to the people being photographed before the shutter clicks.

“You have to be able to explain briefly to somebody why the photographs are part of something bigger.” — David Bacon

Participant photography: trust earned, not taken

Bacon recounts photographing strikes he helped organize at Versatronex in Silicon Valley and CalSpas in Southern California. Those images were intimate because he was intimate: he took photos while helping run meetings, feeding families, and organizing tactics like a plantón (camping outside a supplier to pressure them). That access produced images you can’t get by dropping in with a press badge.

He’s candid about messy endings. Versatronex closed its plant after a threatened union election; CalSpas strikers ran out of resources and returned to work. The photographs didn’t manufacture victories, but they preserved the difficult choices, the private meetings where people argued about going back to work, and a man crying over the decision. Those are the moments that turn anonymous headlines into political memory.

Practical takeaways Bacon gives for earning trust fast:

• Have a clear answer for why you’re taking photographs and what you’ll do with them.

• Work with organizations when they exist. They multiply your impact and help protect people.

• Learn to explain your intent quickly. You will be asked on the spot.

Projects grow — start small, think transnational

What began for Bacon as coverage of an immigration enforcement operation in Nebraska (Operation Vanguard) became a 20-year project tracing communities between the U.S. and Guatemala, Oaxaca and California. Photographing the meatpacking towns of Madison and Omaha after INS raids led him to the villages people had left and to histories of violence and U.S. foreign policy that help explain mass migration.

This is his argument against the “one-off” approach: show up, click a few frames, sell a picture, move on. Those photographs can be useful as a starting point, he says, but if your goal is political change you need projects that move across time and place. His book Communities Without Borders blends portraits, oral histories and analysis to do exactly that. It treats migrants as experts in their own experience.

Juxtaposition, symbols and political composition

Bacon returned repeatedly to the idea that composition can expose power. He described images that juxtapose symbols, like a billboard promising “the best of America” behind a line of unemployed Black men or photographs that “Mexicanize” Soviet symbols to build revolutionary iconography (as Tina Modotti did in 1920s Mexico). These are not decorative decisions; they are choices about which power relationships you want the viewer to see.

If you intend your pictures to mobilize, think about what you leave in and what you cut out. Bacon pushes photographers to study earlier movement photographers, not as museum objects but as tactical manuals.

Craft matters: slow down to be useful

Bacon is blunt: the camera is a tool, and using it poorly wastes trust. Craft issues he presses on:

• Look before you click. Composition and framing are political choices.

• Work in the darkroom or on your printer/screen: turning raw files into photographs is where decisions that shape meaning happen.

• Slow down even in the digital age; impatience flattens images that could otherwise be more powerful and persuasive.

He also makes the case for printing your images: seeing a physical print reveals flaws and possibilities that a phone screen won’t.

Risk, role and the journalist/participant question

We talked about journalists and the question of independence. For example, reporters arrested covering protests in Minnesota, where federal prosecutors treated them as part of the protest they were covering as journalists. Bacon makes two points. First, if someone claims journalistic status to secure legal protections, we must defend that right; the law and journalists' unions exist to protect people doing that work. Second, the newsroom ideology of strict neutrality is itself political and often masks the publisher’s viewpoint.

He refuses an either/or trap. Some people will be embedded, some will claim journalistic distance, some will live in the community they document. Often the most difficult question for photographers comes down to economics: how do you make a living doing committed work when the industry rewards contingency and churn? Bacon is forthright about tradeoffs: staying true to a movement may close some doors, and you’ll have to find other ways to survive (with things like union gigs, book projects, grants, community commissions).

Photography as organizing tool, not only evidence

Bacon’s most important insistence is that photographs are meant to be used by movements on social media graphics and printed flyers and publications, at events and on protest signs, not merely packaged for galleries or commercial outlets. He described leaflets that raised money for striking workers, strike kitchens photographed on the sidewalk, and images that embarrassed employers by exposing hiring-hall humiliations.

That use-case thinking changes how you shoot. A picture for an art gallery exhibition may have a different job than a picture meant for a community meeting where people decide whether to sustain a strike.

A reader’s small list of next moves

If you want to move from bystander to movement photographer:

1. Decide on your clear, succinct answer to “why am I taking this photo?”

2. Build relationships and trust with organizations and unions over time; that will multiply your access and reach.

3. Print some of your images. It slows you down and sharpens judgment.

4. Projects can grow and change over time; follow them where they lead. What started as covering one immigration raid in a small town turned into David Bacon's decades-long commitment to work closely with and be part of the fight for rights and dignity of immigrant workers that led him to multiple countries and an ongoing organizational relationships.

Closing thought

David Bacon doesn’t romanticize being a movement photographer. He's honest about failure, risk and the economics of choosing a career that’s both political and photographic. But he’s adamant that if your camera’s purpose is social change, you won’t find neutrality useful; you’ll find commitment. The question he leaves us with is the age-old questions unions ask: which side are you on?

David also of course insists that you have to take the craft of photography seriously if you want to create compelling images that are helpful for social movements. For more practical guidance on composition, exposure and finding light, sign up for my newsletter and I’ll send you a free 5-page guide, Some Basics to Help You Get the Picture. It covers the exposure triangle, composition rules you can actually use, and quick tips for making light work anywhere.

If you want to listen to the full conversation with David Bacon (we cover Tina Modotti, Ansel Adams’ politics, and the Nebraska raids in more depth), see the episode on YouTube. And while you're there, subscribe to my page & give the video a like!

— Brad Sigal