Home > Work & Connect > Photocrati Fund Seeks to Fill the Funding Gap That Faces Humanitarian, Environmental Photographers (Interview)

Photocrati Fund Seeks to Fill the Funding Gap That Faces Humanitarian, Environmental Photographers (Interview)

The Fund will award its first $5,000 grant in June -- but the application deadline hasn't passed yet, so interested photographers, apply today.

By Rachel Cernansky
Fri Feb 26, 2010 00:54

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Erick Danzer

Erick Danzer calls himself a philanthrepreneur: using capital raised through traditional for-profit models for charitable purposes. He is also a professional photographer, and after recognizing the diminishing sources of funding for already-underreported humanitarian and environmental stories around the world, he launched the Photocrati Fund to provide $5,000 grants for photographers working on just those types of stories. The deadline for the first grant is March 15, so if you know any photographers out there...

One winner will be announced in June, and Erick hopes to expand the fund to five grants in the coming years. I had a chance to sit down with him this week and learn more about the goals set out by the Photocrati Fund.

Planet Green: How did the idea for the Photocrati Fund come about?
Erick Danzer: I believe in the power of imagery: without video, without still images coming from Haiti, people can't relate to it. In Africa, there are whole multi-year conflicts that go unnoticed. Good imagery can make people notice.

Funding for important photography projects and assignments is drying up—and there are larger and larger sets of stories that are not getting told, unless the photographer covers all the costs.

Credit: Erick Danzer

Erick shares images with children near Borneo's Gunung Palung National Park while working on a story on illegal logging.

PG: Sounds a lot like print journalism.
ED: It does. Now that I think about it, there are a lot of parallels.

With wedding or commercial photography, you can make good money, but if you focus on humanitarian or sometimes environmental issues, you're practically living the life of a starving artist. All too many humanitarian crises—the fact that they're off the radar screen means there's no funding available. In Haiti for example, most networks got their coverage and when the story faded, they pulled out. That doesn't mean that anything is solved.

I believe in a capitalism-philanthropy hybrid—what some people call being a philanthrepreneur. I started a company called Frontier Digital Media, which is a regular for-profit company, but the goal is to contribute 25 percent of the profits to philanthropic causes. The Photocrati Fund is the first venture for Frontier Digital Media and will be the only charitable cause that we start. The second project will probably be Health In Harmony, a health clinic on the edge of a national park in Borneo. It was started by a Yale-trained doctor, and allows people to pay for health services by providing environmental services.

PG: What is the selection process like?
ED: The winner will be chosen by our three board members, all of whom have done some work for National Geographic. What we're looking for in applicants is outstanding photographic talent and a profound understanding of the issue they want to cover. We're giving one grant this year (the Fund's first year), and we'd like to expand to five grants per year.

We're at a moment in history when funding for important projects, whether it comes from private sources or not, is diminishing. One of our board members thinks that the increase in funding is going to have to come from philanthropic sources.