“Life Between Fingers”: A Response to News Photography of an “Urban Ghetto”

Abstract

This photo essay updates research previously presented in Visual Communication Quarterly about news characterizations of a “Black neighborhood” in Iowa City, Iowa. Shot by preschoolers in the city's Southeast Side, the images in this essay—peppered with the inadvertent appearance of the photographers' fingers—added to an artistic value that cast life there being other than dangerous, dark, and devious. Whereas hands can often be used to conceal, the fingers in these photographs frame special and specific glimpses of life, ultimately presenting a counternarrative to neighborhood characterizations constructed by news photographs.

Note

Notes

¹ My time at the neighborhood center was in the capacity as a journalism instructor and activist. I was, at all times, accompanied by center staff, who confirmed parents and guardians of each child had signed release forms that provided permission for their child to be photographed and for the photographs to be published. The author maintains copyright for these images. The families of the children who appeared in the essay received two copies of their children's photographs, and the neighborhood center received a collage of the essay.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robert E. Gutsche

Robert E. Gutsche, Jr. is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Florida International University, North Miami, Florida. Email: [email protected].