she starts out with the same set of ques-
tions for everyone, “a lot changes in
the moment, and it evolves from there.
Something may not be very interesting,
so we’ll go down a different road.”
The conversation continues while
she’s photographing, so “there’s not a lot
of posing.” While Ottesen pays attention
to the light and the position of her sub-
jects, her main focus is on encouraging
people to be natural. “With both photos
and writing, I’m not after efficiency,” so
she tells them not to worry about their
mouths being open or awkward poses
because “we’re going to throw those
images out.” She adds, you can’t get
them to be themselves without that.
Key Moments During The Project
Ottesen says there were certain por-
traits during the project that were par-
ticularly emotional and memorable.
When photographing gun control
advocate Gabby Giffords at her home,
Ottesen asked her, “What do you want
to convey?” Giffords, who was injured
in a shooting while serving in Con-
gress, had her fist clenched at the time
and said, “Hope, hope, hope.” That
moment, Ottesen says, was “so power-
ful, so brave and so moving.”
Another key moment was her ses-
sion with Congressman John Lewis:
You can see the power of memory on
his face when Ottesen photographed
him in his office as he recalled being
beaten by members of the Ku Klux
Klan on the Freedom Rides in Rock
Hill, South Carolina.
Ottesen says she learned that in 2009,
one of those KKK members—now in
his 70s—came to Lewis’ office to ask
for forgiveness and was comforted by
the Congressman.
Ottesen also photographed Bela-
fonte for this project, in his apartment.
“He’s blazingly eloquent,” Ottesen
says. And with his more than 70 years
of activism, “he’s living history,” she
says. Ottesen captured his expressive
nature as he talked about meeting
W.E.B. Du Bois, having lunch withEleanor Roosevelt and being a close
confidant of Martin Luther King Jr.
By connecting and continuing to
have a conversation with Belafonte,
Ottesen found that she was able to cap-
ture a very personal and meaningful
photograph during the photo session.
And, in fact, part of what makes so
much of this book moving and acces-
sible is this notion of intimacy, which
Ottesen says even applies to the scale
of the volume. For instance, Ottesen
wanted to avoid producing a large cof-
fee table book. Instead, she produced a
book that’s the “size where you can hold
it in your hands,” she says, “and interact
with the words and the images.”Ottesen’s Traveling Photography Studio
To photograph portraits of the figures
in this volume, Ottesen needed to cre-
ate a traveling studio of sorts. Key crite-
ria included portability and being able
to scale her gear to the spaces available
to her.
For example, when photographingPete Souza30 | Digital Photo Pro digitalphotopro.com