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Native Artist and Former Cultural Advisor to the Chicago Blackhawks Sues Team for Sexual Harassment, Fraud

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Native Artist and Former Cultural Advisor to the Chicago Blackhawks Sues Team for Sexual Harassment, Fraud
Details
By Elyse Wild

May 17, 2024

A Native American artist is suing an NHL team that hired her to build better relationships with Native American communities amid backlash about its name, logo, and imagery depicting Native stereotypes. 

Nina Sanders (Apsáalooke) filed suit on May 14 in an Illinois court against the Chicago Blackhawks organization, alleging she was the victim of sexual harassment and fraud during her employment.

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When Sanders was hired as an independent contractor by the Blackhawk Organization in 2020, the team was mired in criticism following an announcement from the Washington Redskins that they would retire their name and logo.

According to the lawsuit, Daniel Wirtz, Blackhawks chairman and CEO, reached out to Sanders, offering her the position of liaison between the team and the Native American community. Wirtz made several promises to entice Sanders to accept the role, including hiring Native Americans, educating employees on Black Hawk, a Sauk leader, facilitating landback to the Sac and Fox Nation, and changing the team’s logo. 

In the lawsuit, Sanders states that none of these promises were fulfilled and that Wirtz “only intended on the Organization benefiting from their association with Ms. Sanders, as her standing and reputation in the Native American community.”

The suit alleges that shortly after Sanders began employment with the Blackhawk Organization in Septemeber 2020, her direct supervisor told her not to communicate matters such as sexual harassment in written form, such as email; rather, she should communicate such complaints through telephone or in person.

The lawsuit details several allegations of sexual harassment and assault toward Sanders and other women in the organization by two men associated with the team. One alleged incident involved an agent for the team sending Sanders sexually explicit videos of him masturbating on Snapchat; another in which he grabbed her arm and insisted he come to her room. 

The suit alleges that in November 2022, a Blackhawks dancer approached a woman and a private suite at the United Center and groped her. The woman, Sanders says, previously filed a police report against the dancer alleging he raped her. In another alleged incident, a man associated with the team sexually assaulted an employee. Sanders puts forth that none of the complaints were investigated by the Blackhawks organization or reported to the police. 

Following Sanders complaints of the incidents to her direct supervisor, she was moved out of team’s headquarters at Chicago’s United Center to a different location.

In June 2023, Sanders’ contract was terminated when, while an extension of her contract was being negotiated, she reassurted her allegations of harrasment and asked the organization how it planned to address the complaints.

“support specific initiatives in partnership with the Sac & Fox Nation and other Native American communities” and that “the organization had noted operational issues in her work, and had received feedback from external partners that they did not want to continue to work with her.”

According to the New York Times, the Blackhawk’s organization issued the following statement in response to the allegations:

“The Chicago Blackhawks have a zero-tolerance policy for misconduct and take allegations of harassment in the workplace very seriously,” one of the team’s statements read. “In response to Ms. Sanders’ allegations, the organization immediately conducted a thorough investigation with the assistance of outside counsel, including interviews with internal and external parties, and review of pertinent materials and digital records. Based on the information available to us, we found insufficient evidence to substantiate her claims. Of note, the persons identified by Ms. Sanders in your question are not, and have never been, independent contractors with nor employees of the Chicago Blackhawks.”

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About The Author
Author: Elyse WildEmail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Elyse Wild is senior editor for Native News Online and Tribal Business News.


Taking a Bite Out of Thanksgiving: Playwright Talks Native Humor,

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Taking a Bite Out of Thanksgiving: Playwright Talks Native Humor,

Larissa FastHorse. (Courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation)Larissa FastHorse. (Courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation)

Larissa FastHorse is the first Native American woman to have a play produced on Broadway. That show — “The Thanksgiving Play” — is now onstage at Steppenwolf Theatre. It’s a satire about earnest theater folks who attempt to stage a historically accurate Thanksgiving play. Mistakes are made, and political correctness, wokeness and virtue signaling get carved and stuffed.

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FastHorse belongs to the Sicangu Lakota Nation. She is a 2020 MacArthur Fellow, a founder of the consulting group Indigenous Direction, and worked on the touring production of “Peter Pan,” devising a new backstory for the character Tiger Lily.

WTTW News spoke with the playwright, who was at her home in Santa Monica.

WTTW News: So what do you do on Thanksgiving? Is it just another Thursday? Do you order takeout?

Larissa FastHorse: Oh, no, I love the goofy food! I love a big plate of beige and orange food. I grew up eating stuffing, mashed potatoes, turkey and sweet potato. It’s all one color palette, plus it’s more carbs than you ever get to eat. I grew up in South Dakota and my father came from an agricultural background, so it was very much about harvest and being appreciative and for the time of rest for farmers. You still have to get up every morning and feed animals and milk the cows, but you don’t also have to do planting and cultivation. It’s an exciting kickoff to a new season for farmers in a way that I think city folks don’t understand.

I sure don’t. Your play was written a few years ago, so what’s your role when Steppenwolf calls?

FastHorse: When Steppenwolf calls, I show up because I’m a fangirl of their work and their place in American theater. To their credit, they reached out to me right away and said, ‘Hey, we’d love to have you involved,’ and I was like, ‘Yay!’ I helped with the choice of director (Jess McLeod) and somewhat in casting. I was there for the first week of rehearsals, and then I came back during tech rehearsals. I was in and out of the process but was there as an advisor and spent time talking about things like how to engage the local Indigenous communities.

“The Thanksgiving Play” runs through June 2 at Steppenwolf Theatre. (Michael Brosilow)“The Thanksgiving Play” runs through June 2 at Steppenwolf Theatre. (Michael Brosilow)

Was it fun to write a satire? Did you care who gets offended, or did you just want to hold up the mirror of truth?

FastHorse: I poke fun at everybody. No one escapes. It’s not like, ‘Oh, we’re just going to laugh at those people.’ There’s definitely fun to be had in this production, and I wanted people to be rewarded for leaving their couch and their streaming service and coming to the theater. It matters that a space like that is filled with laughter, and at the same time you’re going to hear a truth. I was lucky with this piece. It was fairly easy to write, in that 80% of it is just lines from my life, things people have said to me. I just had to connect that with a bunch of jokes. [laughs]

Is there a Lakota-style sense of humor or approach to storytelling?

FastHorse: In most Native cultures, and Lakota culture for sure, humor is a core cultural trait. I always warn people who are not Lakota when I bring them back home that teasing is how we learn who you are and how we show love. Once they start making fun of you, you’re in. [laughs] I rarely speak in generalizations about Native American people on the continent, but if you get any Natives together, within a minute the laughter is off the charts. Laughter is how we connect. Laughter is how we cope. It’s something that’s a huge part of our resiliency. We’re in the longest ongoing genocide — it’s been hundreds of years, and it’s still going – and we’re still here.

“The Thanksgiving Play” runs through June 2 at Steppenwolf Theatre. (Michael Brosilow)“The Thanksgiving Play” runs through June 2 at Steppenwolf Theatre. (Michael Brosilow)

In conversations with Native artists, I often ask, ‘What do you want people to know about you?’ And I hear a lot of: ‘That we’re still here. That we’re creative and vibrant and not stuck in your 19th century notions.’

FastHorse: We’ve been frozen in the time when White people first encountered us — roughly 1830 through the 1860s — and that’s so messed up. That’s when White people saw us and painted us, and photography showed up on the scene. What about the 1,000 years before that? What about the years after that? Like all humans, we’re constantly evolving and growing and adapting. For many years I couldn’t even apply for some grants because I’m not, quote, ‘a traditional Native American artist’ because I’m not doing things White people saw us doing in the mid-1800s.

Do you have any parting thoughts on your experience working on theater in Chicago?

FastHorse: You know, I’m an LA girl, but I will say Chicago audiences have earned their reputation for being serious theater people. They’re deeply involved and so engaged. They get there early and stay late and have discussions about the work. Among non-Chicagoans, folks can be like, ‘Really? You think you’re the theater people?’ Well, you are. You show up and know your stuff. It’s beautiful to see.

“The Thanksgiving Play” runs through June 2 at Steppenwolf’s Ensemble Theater.

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Artists withdraw from Toronto photography festival due to its ties to Israeli weapons manufacturer

By in Photography

Artists withdraw from Toronto photography festival due to its ties to Israeli weapons manufacturer

In one of the latest protests stemming from the Israel-Hamas war, artists are boycotting Toronto’s Contact Photography Festival—an annual, month-long event that takes place throughout the city in May, with more than 130 exhibitions and 250 artists participating this year.

Earlier this year, a grassroots campaign started encouraging people to withdraw from Contact due to its long-time sponsor Scotiabank’s ties to the Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems. (Scotiabank had previously announced that it would end its sponsorship of the festival after this year, a serious blow to the arts organisation’s financial future.) The protest, organised by the groups No Arms in the Arts (NAITA, an artist collective that specifically formed to demand that prizes and festivals push Scotiabank to divest from Elbit) and Artists Against Artwashing (AAA, which calls on Canadian cultural institutions to divest from “settler colonialism and genocide”), has resulted in more than a dozen exhibitors dropping out of Contact this year. Earlier this week, Scotiabank announced that it has halved its stake in Elbit.

The AAA representative Mitra Fakhrashrafi tells The Art Newspaper that Elbit is “directly linked to the ongoing genocide on Gaza and across Palestine. In many instances, upon withdrawing from the festival, artists made clear to Contact staff and board that they wanted accountability, they wanted Contact to leverage their relationship with Scotiabank and ask them to divest. We, artists and cultural workers, do not want to participate in Scotiabank’s war profiteering, and we do not want arts funding that is tainted by genocide.”

The Brooklyn-based artist Umber Majeed’s exhibition Dil Dil Trans-Pakistan (Heart, Heart Trans-Pakistan)—examining, among other issues, a corrupt real-estate company in Lahore—is now virtual after initially being scheduled as part of Contact. Her decision to withdraw was based on ethics, she says. “If I’m talking about land-grabbing and class warfare by large corporations, ethically and morally as an artist, it doesn’t make sense to take money from people who are contributing to that process elsewhere,” Majeed says. “There’s a war happening and a genocide, and it’s real. I don’t want my work to be associated with that.”

In November, Majeed and a curator she was working with at the artist-run centre Trinity Square Video—which was scheduled to host Majeed’s show—had already decided to reject Contact’s C$3,000 artist fee. That decision, Majeed says, had “immediate repercussions” when the curator was fired, a move that revealed “the hypocrisies of the non-profit art world”. Majeed thinks NAITA is an important campaign, “because we’re trying to untangle very embedded infrastructures—the weapons industry, the corporate world and the art world—and this is a very particular time to talk about it.”

Members of NAITA and AAA—who have also called for the arts community to withdraw support from the Scotiabank-funded film festival Hot Docs and the Giller Prize literary award—claimed a partial victory in light of Scotiabank’s recent announcement that it has drastically cut down its stake in Elbit. “We consider this a direct result of the public pressure Scotiabank is facing and the people’s growing demands for Scotiabank to drop Elbit,” Fakhrashrafi says. “We see full divestment from arms manufacturing on the horizon, and we will continue to escalate and organise with arts workers until Palestine is free.”

Contact’s longtime chief executive, Darcy Killeen, says the whole situation has been “heartbreaking” for the 28-year-old festival, which he has directed for the past two decades—15 years of which were funded by Scotiabank as title sponsor. “We are a community-based organisation, and we share many of the same values as the campaigners,” Killeen says, adding that he was “shocked” when Scotiabank’s C$600m ($440m) stake in Elbit was publicly revealed last November.

Sponsor cashes out

“Scotiabank has been an incredible sponsor,” Killeen says. “They have supported 2,500 artists and given C$1m ($734,000) in artist fees directly to artists.” He adds that the festival has grown by leaps and bounds while working with Scotiabank, with a new outdoor public installation programme and increased numbers of staff and exhibitors. But when Contact met with Scotiabank in May 2023 about a funding renewal, “they told us they were changing their priorities for what they would fund in 2024″, Killeen says. “They said we had until 31 May 2024, and then that was it.”

Killeen sees the broader picture of losing Scotiabank’s sponsorship as a “shift in funding priorities for sponsors and donors away from culture and towards ‘cause-based’ issues—like health care, child welfare and international relief efforts”. He notes that Scotiabank has been “reducing the cultural properties they’ve been involved with in general”. (The bank has also divested from Toronto’s annual all-night arts festival Nuit Blanche.)

With a sudden shortfall of the roughly C$500,000 ($367,000) per year that Scotiabank previously contributed, Contact has begun a four-year restructuring plan that will see the layoffs of two of the festival’s six full-time staff members. Contact expects revenues to fall by 65% in 2025.

“Our focus has always been on empowering marginalised communities,” Killeen says. “Now those voices will be diminished due to funding issues.” He adds that Contact has been “fully supportive of people who withdrew” from its programmes this year, and he is personally looking forward to a meeting with NAITA and AAA members. “Our values are very much aligned,” he says. “Now we have the opportunity to sit down and work together for the best.”

Kate Middleton’s Mother’s Day photo controversy takes new turn after Buckingham Palace honour

By in Photography

Kate Middleton’s Mother’s Day photo controversy takes new turn after Buckingham Palace honour
Princess Kate gets huge support after Mother’s Day photo controversy

Kate Middleton has been defended by the curator of a new exhibition, who described the retouching of royal photos as “part of the creative process,” which is a new turn after Mother’s Day photo controversy that revolves around Princess.

The Alessandro Nasini, the curator of the Buckingham Palace exhibition celebrating 100 years of royal photographs, emphasized that retouching remains an essential tool in royal portrait photography, reported GB news. 

This practice, which can range from cropping images to removing backgrounds, has been defended despite controversy over a Mother’s Day photo taken by Prince William earlier this year. Nasini noted that many of the photos on display at the King’s Gallery have been retouched.

Nasini’s comments came two months after six major picture agencies issued “kill notices” to withdraw a photograph of the Princess of Wales with her children for Mother’s Day.

They claimed it had been digitally altered. Kate, 42, later admitted she experimented with editing the family photo.

Despite this, Nasini has asserted retouching is a vital tool in his industry.

He said: “I am not familiar with those particular [media tests] but retouching per se has always been part of photography really since the inception of photography.

“It’s very important specifically for portrait photography because it’s a creative process. It’s not press photography, it’s not reportage, it’s not commercial photography.

“It’s just simply a tool that has always been used by photographers to translate their vision, the aesthetics, into the final print. It’s part of the creative process. It’s just one of the tools.”

For the unversed Kate has recently been honoured after the image of the princess bears a “striking resemblance” to an 1864 portrait of Alexandra, Princess of Wales, by Franz Xaver Winterhalter from the Royal Collection, is hang nearby.

The King’s Gallery is set to unveil a collection of previously unseen royal photographs in its latest exhibition. This display marks the debut of personal photographs from the Royal Collection, offering a glimpse into 100 years of royal photography. 

Royal Portraits: A Century of Photography’ opens tomorrow (Friday, May 17) at The King’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, and closes on October 6, 2024.

This Tucson photographer takes free portraits of foster dogs to help them find their furever home 🐶

By in Photography

This Tucson photographer takes free portraits of foster dogs to help them find their furever home 🐶

When golden hour strikes at Reid Park, you might find local photographer Tyler Espinoza snapping photos of his latest subject.

As Espinoza begins the photo session, he often finds the subject’s lips tucked in as they try to smile or their tongue out with excitement as they roll around in the dirt — because his subjects aren’t people. They’re dogs.

Once a month, Espinoza hosts the Foster Foto Fiesta — a free 20-minute photo session for local foster dogs. Espinoza snaps the snazzy portraits that showcase the dogs’ true character in hopes of helping them find their forever home.

“There’s a big problem in Pima County right now with the amount of dogs in PACC and it’s just unsustainable,” he said. “Us as a community, as a county, as a city, have a responsibility to do better for the animals that we share our town with and our homes with. And a lot of people put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into rescuing these dogs, foster parents being a good example of opening their home and really giving these dogs a second chance at life. 

“Taking pictures of them and helping to just spread the word and hopefully providing an image that will stop somebody scrolling on social media long enough to fall in love with the dog and possibly think about adopting feels like a really small, truly tiny way that I can help chip away at the problem. … I wish I could do a lot more. I wish I could photograph all the dogs. But it just seems like a small way that I can help.”

Since starting the Foster Foto Fiesta three months ago, Espinoza has photographed dozens of local foster pups. 



Tyler Espinoza Photography

Local foster dog Curly Jack is currently being fostered through AZ Pug Life Rescue. 


Courtesy of Tyler Espinoza


The idea was developed during one of his regular dog photography sessions when he was snapping pictures of a pup who was celebrating one year of being adopted by its foster family.

“They’re telling me, ‘Hey, I adopted this dog but now I’m just gonna keep fostering more dogs,’” he said. “So I thought that it would just be fun to do more photoshoots for foster dogs because these people who are dedicated to saving dogs will foster a huge number of dogs. And sometimes it takes forever for them to find a home.”

The next Foster Foto Fiesta takes place from 5-7:20 p.m. Sunday, May 19 at Reid Park. Espinoza still has spots available for the upcoming photo session. Fosters can register on his website.

Priority for the free sessions go to foster dogs who are seniors, long-term fosters, have special medical needs or are a restricted breed, such as bully breeds, according to his website.

“I try to stick to criteria that will help me help the dogs that need it the most,” he said.

Before each session, Espinoza will work with fosters to get to know the pup a little better by finding out if they have any allergies or behavioral needs. The goal of each session is to provide a “top-notch service” for foster pups and their families, he says, by making sure everyone is safe and never over-stressed.

One of his favorite things about the photo session is seeing the dogs’ true, sometimes silly, characteristics emerge.

At one of his recent Foster Foto Fiestas, he photographed a one-year-old Frenchie who has food and environmental allergies. Despite his serious allergies, the pup, Curly Jack, was a total goofball throughout the photo session as he continuously crawled on his belly in the grass.

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“It was just really goofy and one of those moments where dogs are just going to be dogs,” Espinoza said.

Getting out of the shelter or a bad home can help dogs in need thrive, and Curly Jack is just one example of that.



Tyler Espinoza Photography

Local foster dog Curly Jack is currently being fostered through AZ Pug Life Rescue. 


Courtesy of Tyler Espinoza


“I am hoping that by having more imagery that is not depressing, like a dog cowering in the corner or a shadowy picture of a dog in a shelter cage, might help people see the dog for who they are in a way that really truly makes them fall in love with the dog and will sort of encourage them to learn more about a particular dog. Hopefully, to the point where they’re adopted,” Espinoza says. “That’s my goal.”

Since the foster photo program is fairly new, Espinoza says there haven’t been many “alumni” yet, but he’s hopeful the fosters, including Curly Jack, can find their permanent homes.

When he isn’t hosting the monthly Foster Foto Fiesta, Espinoza works on dog photo sessions for non-fosters. Each of his regular sessions last 60-90 minutes and require a $200 session fee. After the session, clients are able to view and select their images and choose a photo package, which start at $475, according to his website.

Before becoming a professional photographer, Espinoza graduated with a degree in biochemistry from the University of Arizona. He used his degree to work in the wine industry, but eventually decided it wasn’t something he could see himself doing long-term.



Tyler Espinoza

Tyler Espinoza, 31, is a professional dog photographer in Tucson. He runs the Foster Foto Fiesta — a monthly free photo session for local foster dogs.


Courtesy of Tyler Espinoza


He then pivoted to a lifelong passion of his: photography.

Initially, he solely did family portraits. But after a couple years, he realized that wasn’t exactly where his passion was. 

“I don’t have a family, I don’t have kids. It’s not in the books for me. It’s not my thing. But I love animals and so I have tried to find a way to connect that and that led me to where I am,” he said. “So, now I do almost exclusively dogs or families with dogs, but it’s centered around people who want to celebrate the bond they share with their animal companion.”

Espinoza, who was born in Alaska and moved to numerous places around the country before winding up in Tucson, has always had a passion for animals. Growing up, he and his family had hamsters, parakeets, cats and dogs. 

It was ultimately his love for dogs that convinced him to pivot from traditional portraits to something a little more … furry.

“The time that we spend together, the hour, any minutes that we have where somebody just gets to endlessly profess their love for their dog and make this safe, loving space for them to just be with their family and everybody’s laughing and having fun. It feels like such a nice retreat from everything that’s going on in the world,” he said.

For more information about Tyler Espinoza’s Foster Foto Fiesta and dog photography, check out his website.

Photographer Behind AbbVie’s Clearly Me Campaign for Amplifying Voices of Psoriasis Speaks to Advocacy, Awareness

By in Photography

Photographer Behind AbbVie’s Clearly Me Campaign for Amplifying Voices of Psoriasis Speaks to Advocacy, Awareness

AbbVie recently celebrated the launch of its “Clearly Me” campaign, aimed at empowering individuals living with psoriasis to embrace their true selves and defy the constraints of their condition.

Partnering with psoriasis patients and advocates Katie Lowes, DaQuane Cherry, Ayesha Patrick, and Joanna “JoJo” Pomerantz, along with renowned photographer Lindsay Adler, the campaign showcases the real-life stories of psoriasis patients through imagery.

Images will be on display at a gallery in New York City through May 18. The gallery seeks to amplify patient voices and raise awareness about psoriatic disease, reminding individuals that they deserve more than just “good enough” and to encourage them to seek out the wealth of resources provided by psoriasis.com.

Adler, the photographer behind the captivating portraits, is an award-winning portrait and fashion photographer, educator, and author based in New York. She spoke with Dermatology Times to discuss her involvement in the project and her process of using images to bring the dynamic, multifaceted lives of individuals with psoriasis to the forefront of the conversation.

Katie Lowes, Photographed by Lindsay Adler
DaQuane Cherry, Photographed by Lindsay Adler
Joanna Pomerantz, Photographed by Lindsay Adler
Ayesha Patrick, Photographed by Lindsay Adler
image

Transcript

Lindsay Adler: Hi, I’m Lindsay Adler. I’m a portrait and fashion photographer here in New York City. I have been shooting for more than half of my life. As a photographer, I in fact received an award yesterday from the UN for photographic achievement. My job is a combination of creating imagery for commercial clients, shooting portraiture, which I also do for private clients, and then I’m also a photo educator. So in the world of photography, I would say I’m one of the more influential names, teaching generations of photographers for the last 15 years.

Dermatology Times: How did you become involved in the Clearly Me campaign, and what was your creative process?

Adler: I’ve actually worked with AbbVie several times under different brands. They reached out to me, and part of the reason they reached out to me was because they knew that I could straddle the world of both fashion commercial and portraiture. The idea behind the project was to photograph for individuals that all have psoriasis, but that the images, the portraits, would not be about psoriasis; it’s about them as vibrant individuals. Initially, when I first saw the brief, it’s one of those jobs that as a photographer, you’re like, “Yes!” because they wanted me to be creative. They wanted me to make images that weren’t fitting a certain brand aesthetic or weren’t fitting really tight, restrictive boundaries. Instead, the images were meant to represent those people.

How it worked is we discussed what the end goal was. The end goal was going to be creating these individual images, and then it would be a gallery show to celebrate these individuals and also provide a platform for us to talk about psoriasis and psoriasis.com.

How the process began was: They selected the 4 subjects, and they selected them for different reasons. Sometimes it was for their advocacy, sometimes it was because of their reach, or just because they were exciting, fun individuals, and that would make for great portrait subjects. The first part of my process is I got on the phone, and I talked to each subject for around an hour. As I talked to them, the concept of psoriasis certainly came up, but that wasn’t the focus. Instead, the goal was: Who are you? What are you passionate about? What brings you joy? How would your friends and family describe you? Those sorts of things, so I could kind of dive a little bit deeper into the psychology of what makes them who they are and what brings them happiness.

Then, the idea of Clearly Me is that they can enjoy the vibrancy of their lives, and psoriasis isn’t getting in the way of; it’s not what defines them. Psoriasis is part of who they are, but it’s not the depth of who they are as an individual. I got to create things as diverse as photographing a painter working on one of his pieces of artwork. I also got to photograph an actress, and we did something where it would look like she was on the stage, or something to represent her podcast. I photographed someone who loves to cook. It was a wide range of different things.

The end result, the end deliverable, was everybody got one simple portrait, and that portrait was just meant to show them as they love, who they are, no glitz, glam, no crazy hair and makeup. It’s just them as a person. Then the other 3 vignettes that we did, those vignettes would tell their story. So in total, there were kind of 4 different concepts per person.

Dermatology Times: What did you learn from the project, and what do you hope others will take away from it?

Adler: I have someone in my life that has psoriasis. It was interesting, because I didn’t realize either how severe it could be or how varied–that every single person is different. I never did the research on it, and so in talking to the individuals and the different subjects, I got to hear their struggles and triumphs, both, and I got to see the range of how the condition can affect them. But at the same time, it was not something that they necessarily focused on. They might have had advocacy to help others realize what they could do and how they could get past it, or what resources are available to them, for example.

What I actually hope is that when people see the photos, in some way that they would have to actually read that it has anything to do with psoriasis. I wasn’t doing close ups of the skin to show the condition. That’s not what it was about. It’s just these people that live their lives and don’t let it define them. It’s interesting to have that sort of brief where you’re intended to look at the photos and not necessarily know what it’s for until you read deeper, which is not usually the case when it comes to commercial and portrait work.

Dermatology Times: How can initiatives and photographs like these be used to amplify awareness and social change?

Adler: The first idea is more about, quote, society in general, seeing more images of diverse people, and that’s in its entirety. That’s whether it’s someone’s gender identity, or it is a skin tone or skin texture, or an age or a body type, you name it. Seeing more and more commercial shoots and projects that are making sure to highlight diverse people is fantastic.

I was actually talking the other day, in the past 2 years, more of my work has been photographing, we’ll call it: “real people,” using loosely, but diverse people that represent the atypical model. Far more of my work has been that, and I think that is a great direction that things are moving. It’s wonderful, and that’s also why it’s good for me as a photographer, because I don’t have a background just photographing 18-year-old, tall models with perfect skin. My background began as portraiture, so it’s a skillset that I can bring table.

As far as advocacy for individuals, I think the whole idea is just awareness. I don’t think people have an idea of what can or can’t be treated or what life they can or cannot live. A lot of people feel alone or stuck. The more that you can see different people all suffering or conquering things that you’ve dealt with it, I think it’s empowering. It lets people know: I can take control of the situation.

The person I was referencing in my life didn’t even know what it was, what those solutions were. Actually, when I did this project, he’s like, “I love that it makes people more aware of of what’s available to them.”

Dermatology Times: What would you like dermatology clinicians and those in the field to know or be cognizant of?

Adler: One of the goals of the project, Clearly Me, is for people to go to psoriasis.com, because that’s the resource where they can find more information. I think that’s part of it.

Then, as with with anything, I’m sure dermatologists have this under control: However, knowing that every single person’s experience is different, and there is a psychological side to it. When I was interviewing each of these individuals, they had different stories and different emotions of how they felt about their psoriasis. Everyone is going to come to it from a different point of view. I think it’s just being gentle and being aware of that and maybe spending the time to get to know how someone struggles or doesn’t struggle with the condition.

[Transcript has been edited for clarity.]

Mexican wins international photography award with image of Tren Maya’s devastation

By in Photography

Mexican wins international photography award with image of Tren Maya’s devastation

Mexican photographer wins international photography award with image that illustrates environmental devastation of the Mayan Train.

Fernando Martínez Belmar won the most important competition in the world in Nature Photography: the Wildlife Photographer of the Year from the Natural History Museum in London.

It is the second consecutive year that the Yucatecan has won this award now in the “Photojournalism” category.

The image taken in Paamul, Quintana Roo, is titled “The Tourism Bulldozer”, which shows the area devastated by the construction of the Mayan Train.

The photograph was taken with a drone, Fernando had to cross 4 kilometers of underground caves to be able to achieve it.

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