We have just been successful on our intent to fund the production of a documentary photography project through crowdfunding. Brazilian platform Catarse.me was our choice two months ago, when we decided to give the first kick on the project. Catarse was the first to introduce crowdfunding into Brazil’s highly connected population. Two months, 95 backers and 16.905,00 brazilian reais (about US$ 10,500.00) collected, almost one thousand reais more than what we asked initially. It is the first successfuly crowdfunded project in documentary photography in Brazil.

Morar (To Live) is the project we will develop on the next few months with the money we collected. It is the sequel to a project we started in 2008, when the tenants of Edifício Mercúrio, in downtown São Paulo, were evicted by the city administration, which had plans to bring the building down and extend the area of the neighboring park. By the time, we followed a few of the evicted families on their fights against the office’s decisions and their search for a new place to live. Over two years later, the building was finally knocked down. The idea now is to go back to those families to see how they’ve dealt with the sudden changes in their lives.

As a result of this process, we’ll publish 1000 copies of a single-edition newspaper, containing images and text. All the process, including expenses, will be open to the public, and we’ll also release the final product under a Creative Commons license. We expect to have the work done in about two months.

Stay with us as we’ll keep this blog updated on the progress of this project. If you understand Portuguese, check out the blog we created for the project: http://morar.tumblr.com/

We got to know Emphas.is a few weeks ago, probably by following a link on Twitter. The idea behind the project impressed us so much that we decided to send them a few questions, which Tina Ahrens kindly responded to.

In their own words:

Emphas.is is a new and innovative platform for photojournalism. It proposes a unique bond between photojournalists and their audience, and in the process aims to create a new financial model for photojournalism in the 21st century.

Through crowd funding, but with a difference. Crowd funding has already proven successful in other areas, and we believe photojournalism has a large and enthusiastic following that would be willing to contribute financially when given the right incentive. Emphas.is offers this incentive in the form of exclusive access to top photojournalists carefully selected by a board of reviewers composed of industry professionals.

Emphas.is home page

Emphas.is comes from the creative minds of photo-editor Tina Ahrens and photojournalist Karim Ben Khelifa. Now, the interview.

1. How did you come up with the idea for Emphas.is? What drove you all into this?

We were discussing the current state of the media one night at home with friends and we all agreed that the old media institutions are not going to recover any time soon if at all and that the solution of how to continue to produce in-depth photojournalism had to be found elsewhere. We wondered what the next logical step would be and Karim had the idea of turning directly to the public to ask what they want to see reported, and instead of paying for a magazine with a fixed content, the audience would pay a small contribution towards realizing the production of a feature they would be interested in. So in a sense we are just cutting out the middlemen, the gatekeepers of our profession when it comes t the production of content.

2. A lot of people in the business say we’re in the middle of a huge crisis – no more venues for publishing photo essays, no money for online content etc. Do you agree? Is Emphas.is a positive response to these claims?

There is certainly a huge crisis in the media right now, there is no denying it. However, I think much of the media is stuck in its ways. It is important to analyze how most people are consuming the news these days. The reader no longer wants to be fed the highly formatted content where the communication process is a one way line. Most readers look for the information that interest them, they want to engage and exchange ideas on the content provided and most of all they trust their social networks to keep them informed. They increasingly rely more on the individual accounts than the objective reporting, they want to be recommended something from someone close to them, they want to decide how deeply they immerse themselves in a story, they want to discuss and shape it. With emphas.is we tried to take all these trends into account and make the reader/viewer a partner in the production process rather than a mere consumer.

3. Beyond the economic particularities, are there structural changes in crowdfunded models, in comparison with the more established ones (such as editorial hierarchy). Also, do you plan on getting the work published on paper? How is that relationship going to work?

As I mentioned above, we are certainly interested in creating the notion of a partnership with the public. We no longer want to tell people what is news worthy and of interested to them, but raise the question and provide choices. In addition we want to create dialogues and discussions between the photojournalists and the audience about certain issues that are being investigated through Emphas.is.

But I would like to stress that we believe in a strong distinction between professional and amateur photojournalism.

4. I have the impression that photographers are usually a bit resistant to these new forms of producing, distributing and even funding content. Do you agree?

Many photographers are reluctant to experiment and are usually quite skeptical, I guess it comes with the profession. However, we had a very positive and enthusiastic response to Emphas.is from the professional photographers around us and it seems most of them are very ready to move on and explore the next step in storytelling.
The time is ripe to change the power structures and move out of this lethargy created by the media crisis.

5. Crowdfunding sounds like the perfect market solution – the public get what they paid for, the photographer gets not only money but satisfaction. Is this model feasible in larger scale? I mean, do you think it will be possible one day to live out of it?

People are willing to pay for something they value. We asked ourselves what is the value inherent in our work? We are not asking for donations, we are offering the reader something in return. We firmly believe that people are willing to pay for an experience, for a unique opportunity to join a creation process, to become insiders to the profession and follow the journeys photographers make to bring back their stories.

So I do think, we can breathe some life back into the production process of professional photojournalism and support it through Emphas.is on a large scale.

Crowdfunding is one of many innovations needed to tackle the problems the media are facing today.

We recently got to know The Sochi Project, by Arnold van Bruggen and Rob Hornstra, a project that aims to cover the changes that will take place in the area of Sochi, Russia, next host of the Winter Olympics in 2014.

In their own words:

The Sochi Project will be a dynamic mix of documentary photography, film and reportage about a world in flux; a world full of different realities within a small but extraordinary geographic area.

The Sochi Project is a unique, in-depth and as such a costly project. Dutch newspapers and magazines are unable to undertake or afford a project of this scale. We think it is important that independent, documentary journalism continues to exist. That’s why we are doing it ourselves.

Check out the interview we made with Arnold van Bruggen (click “Continue” for the interview).

© Rob Hornstra

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Tracy Boyer, from Innovative Interactivity, posted last week a list containing “70 multimedia company websites to peruse for inspiration/internships/jobs“. Us among them.

Originally published on Innovative Interactivity.

Tracy gattered all those links while researching for a section of the blog called Company Spotlight, which brings, periodically, interviews with the people behind some of those companies.

Although we’re very proud of being there, what we want here is to draw attention to the other 69 links. It’s interesting to note that virtually all of them are startups, independent groups, not the old “Big Corp” style. That’s a bit of what Chris Anderson called “the long tail“.

By the way, Tracy invited their readers to collaborate with other examples. What are you waiting for?

During the last World Cup, we had an assignment from Continuum magazine, to portray brazilians watching the games. We then decided to “photograph” the reactions of brazilians around the world, via Skype.

The magazine is now published and you can either download it here or check them out on the map below.