Ideas around images
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Explore PhotoWings + CatchLight Partnerships:
CatchLight Local: Garfield Park
Artists Against An Infodemic
Visual Storytelling Summit 2019
Visual Storytelling Summit 2022
Visual Storytelling Summit 2023
Visual Storytelling Summit 2024
Visual Storytelling Summit 2025
Visual Storytelling Summit 2026
Everyday Bay Area
CatchLight believes in the power of visual storytelling to foster a more nuanced and empathetic understanding of the world. It leverages the power of visuals to inform, connect, and transform communities by combining the practices of art, journalism and social justice. It is a transformational force, urgently bringing resources and organizations together to nurture and grow a thriving visual ecosystem with the goal of helping to support, fund, amplify, create and grow visual storytellers at all levels.
PhotoWings’ dedication to utilizing the power of photography to further deep thinking, communication and action is demonstrated in our partnerships with CatchLight. Our first partnership in 2017 was on the launch @everydaybayarea which helps San Francisco Bay Area residents see and understand each other across generations and cultures. Since then, we have partnered on the 2019, 2022, and 2023 Visual Storytelling Summits which use the power of visual storytelling to inspire, spark dialogue and ignite change. A Media Literacy curriculum has also been created as part of Artists Against the Infodemic. It provides a roadmap for clear health messaging in a world of misinformation incorporating photography as a central element and open-source tools for educators to help revive visual storytelling at the local level. We are currently the education partner for CatchLight Local with its Garfield Park project and three-year California Local Visual Desk initiative. Along the way, PhotoWings has documented the work and lives of some of CatchLight’s leading voices in photography and visual storytelling so their stories can be freely shared.
We are proud to continue our partnership with CatchLight by sharing on-demand videos from the 2026 Visual Storytelling Summit. Launched in partnership with PhotoWings in 2019, the CatchLight Visual Storytelling Summit aims to celebrate the power of visuals to inform, connect and transform communities. A presentation of CatchLight Live, the Summit brings together some of the leading voices in photography for an immersive day of workshops, presentations, conversation, and community. By making space for creative exchange and collective reflection on the evolving role of visual media in our society, we hope to better understand how visual storytelling illuminates urgent issues, deepens empathy, and sparks meaningful dialogue.
Returning to San Francisco on May 2, 2026, the eve of World Press Freedom Day, the Summit explored a theme
focused on three words: Courage. Resilience. Vulnerability. Pictures shape what we believe about each other and the world. This requires bearing witness. It is not optional. If no one shows up with a camera, the story disappears and when the story disappears so does accountability, memory and the record. Trained on-the-ground ethical witnesses make the truth harder to bury and ensures the conversation of what we see belongs to all of us.
Lynsey Addario, one of the most courageous journalists in the world, who has spent the last 25 years on the frontlines covering every major conflict of our generation spoke of her work as a photojournalist. She also spoke of the courage needed to turn the camera around, and the vulnerability required to make her own life visible: the cost, the fear, the impossibility of being in two places at once, the joy and humanity experienced in the field, the aliveness of moving between the separate worlds of life as a photojournalist and that of being a wife and mother.
Other presentations were made by Demetri Broxton and Tierney Gearon and Catchlight Global and Local Fellows. Discover how images can preserve and construct the stories that define us by delving into this and previous CatchLight Summits available in our media archive.
PhotoWings is proud to partner with Catchlight for the next installment of the Night of Photojournalism. This special Austin edition, hosted in partnership with The Texas Tribune Festival, features a visual keynote by John Moore, a senior staff photographer and special correspondent for Getty Images, who will share his ongoing coverage of immigration and U.S. border issues.
Additional speakers include Ilana Panich-Linsman, an Austin-based visual journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Al Jazeera America, CNN and NBC News; and Perla Trevizo, reporter at The Texas Tribune, will be in conversation with Adriana Loureiro Fernández, a photojournalist based in Caracas, Venezuela, whose work focuses on social conflict, environmental issues, and human rights, through the prism of youth.
Throughout the evening, large-scale projections of photo essays by local and international journalists will be brought to life with a live musical performance. Gary Jules, music director for the Night of Photojournalism tour will oversee the musical program.
This event will also mark the open call for the 2026 CatchLight Global Fellowship, which awards three visionary storytellers each year with $30,000 project grants, development opportunities, and more.
PhotoWings is proud to continue our partnership with CatchLight and will share on-demand videos from the 2025 Visual Storytelling Summit! In an era where truth is increasingly contested, partisanship and distrust have reached unprecedented levels. The rise of synthetic imagery further challenges our ability to discern reality. If we are indeed navigating a post-truth world, what responsibility do visual storytellers and journalists have in fostering critical thinking and rebuilding trust? Delve into presentations and talks from previous CatchLight summits through our media archive.
Discover how images can preserve and construct the stories that define us. The CatchLight Visual Storytelling Summit returns on May 3, 2025, as an annual gathering of leaders in photography and visual media, exploring the power of images to shape memory and history.
Taking place on World Press Freedom Day, the summit echoes global efforts to protect press freedom and access to information. It features a dynamic program of morning workshops, breakout sessions, afternoon talks, and an evening of live music with large-scale projected exhibitions by a global network of photographers.
This year’s theme, Photographic Memory, examines how images and archives shape personal, societal, and cultural memory. Through journalism, art, and technology, the program will explore how visual storytelling preserves history, challenges misinformation, and safeguards the integrity of our shared narratives
EACH SPRING, CATCHLIGHT GATHERS our fellowship community and leading voices in photography, media, art and technology for an immersive day of portfolio reviews, visual exploration, conversation, and community. Join us to be inspired by artists, founders, and innovators; learn from peers and industry leaders; and explore the world through visual works of passion and curiosity.
Our theme for this year’s Summit, The Change We Want to See, reflects the unique power of photography, visual journalism, and creative practices to drive social impact.
“Images are instrumental to how we understand our world. They connect people emotionally to issues, promote deeper understanding, build trust, and spark action,” says Elodie Mailliet Storm, CEO of CatchLight. “The Summit is a place where a global community of visual storytellers and leaders in media and technology can gather, share ideas, and push the field forward through partnership and innovation.”
Returning this year as Summit MC is Zena Barakat, Emmy-nominated producer and executive design director at IDEO.
CatchLight Local is a visual storytelling initiative that seeks to revive visual journalism at the local level by connecting visual journalists and resources directly with local newsrooms and community members including engaging the next generation of media makers and consumers. In 2020 PhotoWings partnered with CatchLight and Dysturb to co-create open source curricular tools on local visual journalism and media literacy for educators. This year we will continue to partner with CatchLight on expanding distribution of these curricular tools as well as launch a youth workshop in Salinas, California.
In 2020, Photowings partnered with Dysturb, CatchLight and The Everyday Projects to share the outcomes of the public health information campaign. The project collaborated with artists around the world in a campaign to raise awareness and fight public health misinformation. We used social media and public art activations like paste-ups, posters, and murals to encourage people to follow WHO guidelines and to connect health messages to daily life. Find the full toolkit here.
The CatchLight 2019 Visual Storytelling Summit brought the community together for an immersive day of conversations, portfolio reviews and workshops. PhotoWings partnered with CatchLight to document event presentations by Ethiopian photographer and contemporary artist Aida Muluneh, National Geographic photographer Andrea Bruce, award-winning filmmaker Carlos Javier Ortiz and keynote speaker, Bangldeshi photographer and educator, Shahidul Alam. We also interviewed Shahidul Alam, Aida Muluneh and Tasneem Alsultan.
Interviews with Catchlight Fellows Andrea Bruce, Brian Frank, Sarah Blesener, and Tomas van Houtryve, are also available in the PhotoWings Video Archives.
Everyday Bay Area is a collective of photographers originally organized by CatchLight to capture the diversity and stories of everyday lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. #everydaybayarea
PhotoWings partnered with CatchLight on the launch of Everyday Bay Area (EDBA) and its Instagram feed @everydaybayarea on the theme of Picturing the New California Dream.
We documented presentations and interviewed
The Everyday Projects Co-President, Austin Merrill
EDBA contributing photographers:
Pendarvis Harshaw, Brenton Gieser, Rasta Dave, Mark Murrmann, Felix Uribe
In Focus
Our continued partnership with CatchLight travels to Austin, Texas featuring a traveling exhibition alongside a closing event for TribFest 2026. The exhibition, "Portrait of America," celebrates local photojournalism across the United States - from breaking news to everyday life.
