Dana Romanoff is a Documentary Photojournalist who has traveled around the world with her multi-media company photographing women and telling their stories through compelling narratives. The visual and emotional strength of her message will inspire you to take ACTION and change your world. www.danaromanoff.com
Photos and videos on Diva Maverick Mavens are provided courtesy of Dana Romanoff Photography.
Angelia Miller is the founder of Diva Maverick Mavens www.divamaverickmavens.com a new bread of feisty, non-conformist adventure loving adrenaline-high entrepreneur. The tag-line is: Empowering Women by Interviewing Empowered Women...Inspiring "You" to Take Action! Casting exceptional dynamic talent for fresh content is the mission of Diva Maverick Mavens. The interview is in the original transcript form with minimal editing to preserve the integrity of the content.
How did you get started in the documentary photojournalism?
Dana Romanoff
I guess I started with an interest in the people around me and the world. I especially had an interest in people's lives who aren't necessarily represented in the media as much or who don't have a voice in the mainstream. That was always an interest and when I went to college I devised my own major in cultural studies contemporary issues in society about race, class and gender. I started off doing more written work, ecological and ethnography work. I always loved photography work as well so photography was always on the side. I would use the photography in the ethnographies as well but it was not the main focus of my work. Over the years it became obvious that you can become a visual storyteller and became to more drawn to visual storytelling and to the image. I love speaking with people, interviewing people but I also like capturing people in a picture because a picture can speak across languages.
Tell me about your background as a journalist?
Dana Romanoff
Well I've been working at newspapers as a photojournalist and staff photographer. I went to graduate school at Ohio University school of visual communications in 2002 to study photojournalism. I was always do written work but I was trying to combine more visual work and photography into whatever I was doing. I went to visit Ohio University and was accepted into their program for photojournalism and spent two years there learning to be a photojournalist. I was learning how to do visual story telling, how to be a reporter and how to make powerful images. While I was there I received some internships and after I graduated I worked at the Free Lance Star at Fredericksburg, VA which is about 50 miles south of D.C. It's a smaller community paper of about 46,000 people of daily readership and really got involved in community journalism and telling stories and meeting interesting people locally trying to make a difference and working those skills of working with journalist. I was honing those skills of having to go out and make an image on a deadline, how to tell a story on a deadline, having to find the story and having to gain people's trust and allow people to open up to you. That was a great experience and then I worked for the Charlotte Observer which was a bigger newspaper but similar because it was community journalism and working with reporters and finding issues. I also had the freedom there to go out and meet with different people and kind figure out what's the buzz and what's happening. What are the issues we need to be reporting on?
How do you manage to gain the trust of the people you are working with?
Dana Romanoff
I think that is one of the important things in my work and I'm glad that it shows. You have to form a relationship with the people that you are working with and to do so they have to know that you are really interested in being there. Let's be honest and say why you're there. People open up with people they think really care about them and want their lives to be better and want to tell their stories. At the newspaper because of the deadlines, I wasn't able to spend as much time. In my long term contracts, I spent a lot of time getting to know the people, living with families when I travel some place. I live in the community although I am an observer. As an outsider, I try to become an insider as much as possible. I think it makes the pictures so much richer.
How much time are you spending in these communities to bring about the powerful stories that you are telling?
Dana Romanoff
One of the example would be "Wife of the gods" which was in Ghana, West Africa. It is about a controversial practice of the traditional religion of the Elway people. I was there in 1999 doing an undergraduate semester abroad. I was studying in Ghana and I heard about this practice where women and girls are brought to shrines to atone for the crimes of their ancestors and their made into Trokosi or wife of the gods. It's a controversial practice because people were saying that those girls and slaves to the shrines and enslaved to the priests and are abused forced into marital and physical labor. I went to the village because I was curious so I went to the village as a feminist, journalist, curious person and photographer. I went to chief and the village and told them that I am a student. I want to study and really find out what is happening in their village and ask them if they would accept me. They were hesitant at first but accepted me because I went in a very humble fashion bowing down to the chiefs and saying that I'm here to learn and I'm here as a student. I lived with a family for about a month and half doing written research and just getting to know the culture and the people. I stayed in touch with them and I kind of published my research and they were happy with my finding because they found it to be truthful. I always stayed in touch with the people and few years later when I was in graduate school I received a grant to go back and photograph the project so I was accepted back because they remembered me from before and remembered that I had done truthful work. I had 4 months to photograph so time was on my side. It's rare to have that much time to work on a project. For the first 2 weeks I didn't really take pictures, I walked around with a camera, taking pictures of a cute child or something and funny faces just to let people get comfortable with having me there. And then I started to pick up the camera and it just became an extension of my arm, people didn't really notice that I had the camera and didn't really do anything different. I was taking so many pictures that people's attention span is only so long that they can't just stand there and pose for you they're going to have to get back to their daily lives and you keep photographing them.
What inspires you? Where do you get your ideas and leads from? What inspires you to follow the story?
Dana Romanoff
I guess from all over. For that particular case, I was studying in West Africa and was riding a bus and reading a newspaper and I saw 2 different editorials. One saying these women are queens and the other saying these women are slaves and that kind of struck a cord. I was interested and went there to investigate. I love coming up with story ideas and I love speaking with people and surrounding myself with a diverse group of people which enables me to learn more about what is going on in people's lives and not live in a bubble. Newspaper articles can inspire me. Movies can inspire me. Talking to neighbors and talking to people I wouldn't normally talk to, to see what's is going on. One story that I did was on the survival of burlesque and that was in 2005. I just use this as an example of how I come about a story. I was living in Athens, Ohio working on another project called in search of peace in 2003 and it was after 911. It just felt like we were living in such an anxious mindset in the world, the country and people were filled with anxiety and fears. It was the culture of fear so I wanted to know how people-- other people were finding peace in their life because it was getting to me. I was going around photographing different retreats or different ways that people were finding peace in their lives. Ideas can come from anywhere.
Where are you getting the research for your ideas or are you getting it from the subjects?
Dana Romanoff
The majority from the subjects themselves. I also like to have historical background and speak with different anthropologists that have worked on the topics. Any other news stories that have been done and any other research that has been done. With the stories I'm telling I hearing the voice from the people and with multi-media you can literally hear the people speaking and then I narrate the story from that. But the research comes from speaking from other anthropologists in the field.
How are you able to gain their trust in order to get them to help you with your research?
Dana Romanoff
If it's somebody working on a similar project that I am working on then their is a commonality right there. Why wouldn't they answer my phone call or answer my email. I was working in Mexico most recently and I took a couple of days seeing who was researching what I was researching about women and immigration. There were some anthropologists and organizations doing some of the same work. Of course they were happy to speak with me because we're working on the same story and they're happy to provide the information.
What is the difference between photojournalism and photography?
Dana Romanoff
I consider myself a photojournalist. I'm trying to tell a story with my photography often it's a lot more news related. And maybe a little more new worthy and timely too. As a documentary and photography it's a story that covers an issue that is going on and supports an issue. Personally I'm hoping that my stories will inspire social change. It will inspire people to take action or to think differently on a topic.
What's it like to be a woman in this field? And what kind of advice can you give?
Dana Romanoff
I found it helps me. I think women can easily bond with other women across cultures. For example, working in Mexico, working in Africa and in more rural communities. Women often work in the kitchens and with children. It's really very easy as another woman to help her with her laundry or help her with her children and to form that relationship even if you can't speak the same language. I know how to do a lot of the same chores that she is doing so that's a way to easily gain trust and acceptance. As a female their is also more of an instinct to get a little closer and to be more nurturing and to make those more intimate photographs. To be working with men in a lot of other cultures, I think working a male photographer can be seen as more threatening to the women. Being a female photographing men, I not as threatening or may be considered charming a little more fun to have along so it's helped in those situations as well. Professionally with career, I don't think it's made much of a difference. I graduated with a class that was mostly women. I think women are really leading the way in the field of photojournalism in lots of ways.
Tell us about "No Mans Land Women of Mexico"?
Dana Romanoff
It's about the effect on immigration on women in rural Mexico? It started in 2005, when I was working at the paper in Frederickburg, Virginia. I was doing a series on Latino immigrations kind of a new population, new neighbors. They weren't being represented in the newspaper's pages but I noticed it was a really growing population and community of Spanish speakers and a lot of migrant workers.I began by photographing them and working with a reported Kathy Dyson. I noticed that the majority of the people there were men that had come looking for work. They would tell me where they are from and the people they had left behind in Central America and their children, wives and their girlfriends. They told me how it is for them to be away and who they left behind. That is what got me thinking about the other side of immigration and who are behind these men who are here working. I had the opportunity in 2006, I was awarded an internship with National Geographic Magazine and I pitched this project to them of how are these women who are left in rural Mexico and how these women surviving without their men around and thriving. I went to Oaxaca, Mexico which is one of the southern most states and also one of the most poorest states in Mexico and found a few communities where 80% of the working age men in those towns were here in the US working. The women would describe it as "puerta muere" which meant kind of purely women or only women around.
The stories are sad. Can you comment of this?
Dana Romanoff
Well for "No Man's Land" it was sad but it's also a story of hope and of empowerment and of women making a difference in their communities with the opportunity. With the men gone, yes it's sad to say goodbye to your 14 year old son as he crosses into this other land and have no idea when he will return or if he will return or even if he will make it across the border. It's hard for the women who have a spouse that has been gone for 17 years and comes home for a couple of months at a time. It's really hard but these women are so strong. They are having to take on the jobs of both men and women now and take on the role of both mother and father. Their really being pushed by the men not being there. They are also becoming some of the sole bread winners for the family. In some cases some of the men do abandon them and they're not calling or sending money or maybe there's not much work in the US. There's not much money to send back home. The women are stepping out in the community and taking on non-traditional roles in the community to become leaders in women's groups and to start going to their children's schools and speaking out and speaking up. It's changing from a macho society to matriarchical society is what I saw.
What kinds of obstacles have you overcome?
Dana Romanoff
In my personal life, I've been fortunate not to really have any hugh obstacles. I have a stable loving family, good education and always able to find work and to have an income. I think I've been very fortunate not to have any obstacles which has lead me to do the work I want to do because I think that's pretty unique. Most people in the world don't live such privileged lives. I like to put my efforts back into helping people that have major obstacles in their lives. It doesn't mean that's it's not a challenge being a photographer and photojournalist. It's certainly a challenge daily and a struggle and probably even more so now with newspapers closing and the economy as it is. A lot of fields are hurting right now. Photojournalism is hurting and advertising is hurting. If there is no advertising then how can you get those images published. I think in the field of photography and photojournalism there's a hugh obstacle which is the economy and the changing times and how do we overcome that. I think multi-media is one of the main ways we're going to have to overcome some of these problems and what I mean by multi-media is mixing audio, mixing still images, mixing video and enabling your stories not just to be in print but to go out there on the world wide web and be broadcast all over the world. You can reach a much more broader population with Miltie-media and the obstacle with multi-media is what's the platform. How do we as journalists get paid for what we do? It costs money to do these projects and these stories. It's also a passion. How do you make your passion pay? How do you put food on the table and still do what your passionate about. I guess that's the biggest obstacle that I'm facing right now and a lot of journalist and photographers are facing.
How are you able to fund your passion?
Dana Romanoff
I've been fortunate in the past to always work for newspapers and they've always been very generous with giving me time off to work on other projects. In June I left the paper in Charlotte and kind of made the plunge into the freelance world. I knew you had a quote about paragliding on your site and I read a similar quote about jumping and developing your wings on the way down. I knew that was taking the plunge going freelance and finding a way to make it work. I've been very fortunate to receive grants in the past and pitch story ideas to magazines and have them be accepted. That's getting harder and harder now with more people applying for grants and less money available. I've turned to photographing some weddings. This summer I'll be photographing a bunch of weddings and again to mix my passions in I photograph the weddings in a more photojournalist documentary fashion. I want to kind of capture those candid moments as if I were on a magazine assignment, or as if I were living in another culture, or as if I were photographing any other story. I'm photographing the story of the wedding day. It's more of a non-traditional wedding photographer and hopefully that will fund future projects along with grants and other magazine assignments.
Is there anything else you wanted to add?
Dana Romanoff
If people are wanting to do photography and photojournalism and wanting to follow their passions in any field is to do that to pursue that but know that it is definitely a struggle. You have to find a way to find a balance between putting food on the table and following your passions but hopefully you will know if you are on the right path and the doors will keep opening. If one door closes, you know that hopefully another door will open and to keep at it. There is something I have to constantly keep telling myself that it is a journey because sometimes I expect things to happen instantly. I have to remember to enjoy the ride. As long as you can enjoy it as you do it and for me make a difference in other people's lives and help better other people's lives then I think it's worth it.
To hear the entire story listen to the interview in the podcast directory http://www.divamaverickmavens.com/main/podcast.html.
WIFE of THE GOD from Dana Romanoff on Vimeo.
No Man's Land: The Women of Mexico - trailer from Dana Romanoff on Vimeo.
