Assignment #12_Zhao

Kim Brent, a Texas based photojournalist for daily newspapers including The Beaumont Enterprise, weighed in last Friday on the impacts of the pandemic on daily news publications and the challenges she and her colleagues had faced since the given of the stay-at-home order in Texas.

Although Texas, as most other states, had been in lock down after the stay-at-home order, the work of Brent and many of her colleagues had been much the same, if not more occupied, at home as they must adapt to new sets of challenges.

One of the foremost challenges which Brent had faced was current social distancing guidelines forbid her to capture her subjects with perspective and intimacy. Getting close to subjects usually enables journalists to create photographs which reflect intimate perspectives while share the experience with the audience.

Brent must also find a new way to present emotions as face masks had become problematic in portraits as they often shield the facial expressions. Brent instead attempted to focus on her subjects’ eyes.

“…There’s kind of a great sense of pressure to do your due diligence…to cover your community in how it’s been impacted by this historic moment, and you can’t sit around and wait for somebody to tell you what to do,” said Brent “…so it’s really just been a lot of taking ownership of myself to just go out and pursue those stories and pursue those images…”