By Ted Shen
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James bought an iMac and learned to use its Web-design software. It took him about six months to get his site up and running. “I was trying to build a car and drive it at the same time,” he says. “I spent two months just to get the kinks out. But keep in mind that I had a day job, and this is really a private passion.” Piecing together the editorial content was trickier. “Obviously I didn’t want my site to be a vanity production showing only my digital portfolio,” he says. “The Internet has plenty of those. I decided to call it a magazine, with each issue devoted to a particular theme. I wanted to juxtapose similar and contrasting visions from different people into a context that would illuminate our understanding of small communities and local issues.”
He believes good photojournalists should get involved in their own communities and be valued primarily for their ability to find stories where they live. “I don’t much go for ‘parachute’ journalism. You should scratch beneath the surface. To do so, you’re exercising muscles different from those for news pictures,” he says. “Say, if you’re covering a new day-care center on assignment, you’d take photos of all the relevant people on opening day. But for Souleyes, I would prefer photos that show the daily life, the behind-the-scene relationships. Another example: celebrity photos of Sammy Sosa don’t say anything, but photos of guys in a Humboldt Park Dominican bar watching Sammy on TV tell me about a community that worships him.”
James sees his site as the start of a “grassroots movement” for photojournalists. “I’m opening the door wide, so all sorts of stories can be viewed for no cost at all.”
