Zalcman’s project “Signs of Your Identity,” about boarding schools for indigenous communities in North America, began as a traditional photojournalism project, with straightforward portraits of individuals who had endured that abusive system:
But I realized pretty quickly that the images themselves, the photos that I was taking, they did a very poor job … they weren't going to allow my audience a glimpse into that history. They weren't going to encourage my audience to think more deeply about these systemic things ... And so I realized that pure photojournalism was kind of failing me in that moment and that I needed to come up with a new visual language.
Subscribe to The Design of Business | The Business of Design on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite podcast app.
A big thanks to our sponsor, Mailchimp.