Currently, I'm working on 3 projects simultaneously, and in addition, a small series of a topological project. One of these projects is a social documentary, which requires three things: Time, Access, and Permission.
Time is not a problem per se, you just have to be patient and ignore social media – whose sole objective is to force us to publish everything immediately for the sake of a like – however, access and permission are two more complicated issues.
In many of the situations I'm encountering, permission is not an excessive difficulty. I can't say the same about access. When photographing somewhat vulnerable situations for certain people, it becomes a thousand times more complicated.
How am I resolving it? Well, first of all with politeness. I explain what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. Another thing that's working for me is showing my "proof of print" from my first book Arena. Even though it's self-published, showing the images in a printed format with cohesion and a supporting story changes the receiver's perception. I never show my phone to display images.
Generally, when they see a work materialized into something physical, beyond a 1 and 0 file, they usually open doors for me, invite me to spend time with them, and are even very pleasant.
In the future, when I finish this ongoing project and show it, I will also make a post with the research, field notes, and conclusions I have obtained from this work.
My conclusion is that the printed format is helping me much more. I also observe a certain reluctance on the part of the subjects due to the harm that has been done with social media. Not everything is acceptable.
