What does it take to earn a community’s trust and tell their story with integrity? 

James Estrin has been teaching us all that for the last few decades at The New York Times where he is a staff photographer, and a founder and co-editor of the photography blog Lens. We sat down (virtually) with him to reflect on intimate narratives, the shared core of humanity, and the evolving landscape of multidimensional storytelling.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length. 

How did you become a photojournalist for The New York Times? 

I was actually drawn to journalism before photojournalism. I started an alternative newspaper in junior high school with a friend and got suspended. But in those days, students had rights, we had an ACLU lawyer and got reinstated. The next year, in 10th grade I started a community newspaper with a group of friends. I’ve been reading The New York Times since I was about seven or eight, starting with the sports pages. I started photographing when I was 16. At the time, I was a somewhat failed poet. But I picked up a camera that my father had. And after about six months, I started photographing people, mostly street portraits. And that was when I really found myself. All that eventually led me here. 

Would you consider yourself a writer first and a photographer second? 

I started as a photographer but began writing occasionally for stories I pitched in 2003. I did a lot of writing for The Lens Blog which I co-founded and co-edited. I wrote a lot. But for me, whether you’re a photographer, a writer, or you do video or audio – what’s important is having the opportunity to be the storyteller. It used to be that the photographer couldn’t really be the storyteller, at least not a newspaper photographer. It was very rare. So I was drawn to writing for that reason.

We have many excellent writers but there was a story that I pitched that I got a reporter to do the writing side of things, but that person ended up having to leave for personal reasons. The person who replaced him sort of called it in. And did what I thought was not a good job. And I said to myself, I may not be a writer. But I know I can do at least as well as this.

And for years after that, if there was a story I wanted to write, I would pitch it to the editor and ask if I could write it. A good example of this is a story on black farmers that I did, which was as much words as it was photos. Sometimes stories call for more visuals than writing. And sometimes the situation just calls for me to write more than photograph.

I like having written, but I don’t like writing. I just want to communicate. That’s the core. I’m a photographer but I’m always asking that question: what’s the best way to tell the story? Whenever I’m mentoring young photographers, that’s always the first thing I tell them to ask: What do you want to say? Who do you want to communicate to? Who is your audience? Or audiences. And then what is the best way to communicate to them? What is the best visual strategy? Those are the questions you always need to be asking yourself to be a good storyteller. 

But to answer your question, I’ve always considered myself a photojournalist. From when I was a teenager, I wanted to be a documentary photographer, and I was interested in journalism. I was stubborn. It wasn’t an easy path; it might be harder now, but it wasn’t easy then. But it was something I had to do.

For most photographers, writing is scary. it was for me. It was terrifying. But I had the advantage of working with a colleague, Michael Winerip, who is retired now but was one of the greatest New York Times writers. Someone who I really admire as a reporter. I learned so much from him. He once said to me, “every time I sit down to write, I think I won’t be able to do it.” That was the most liberating thing anyone ever told me. There may be some people who love to write. It’s not the majority. For the majority of people, including my colleagues who are great writers, people love having written. They may love reporting. But the writing part can be painful and hard. But it’s worth it in the end and that’s why you do it. 

Is there one story or project that you worked on that stands out as being the most important story you’ve been able to tell through your lens? 

There’s a story I shot in 2006 that won a Pulitzer for the writing about an imam in Brooklyn. It was an important story at the time because post 9/11 there was, amongst the Arab Muslim community, a tremendous amount of stress. The police and FBI were all over the community. There were a lot of hate crimes against Muslims then. It took a long time to get an imam who was willing and find the right person, as very few people wanted to do this. There was a profound distrust of the media within the Muslim community broadly and particularly in the Arab Muslim community. There was a feeling that everything written was negative or if it was not, it was simplistic and inaccurate. So we had to find someone who let us in, and let us be a fly on the wall over the course of a year. And take a leap of faith, essentially, on us. We finally found someone, Sheik Reda Shata. He was wonderful. It didn’t take more than a month to really get him on our side, but the people around him were always very worried about what we were doing.

The story was brilliantly reported, by Andrea Elliott who won a Pulitzer Prize for the three-part series. But what was meaningful for me in particular was that afterwards we got so many emails and letters from people saying this was the first time they ever really recognized themselves in the media – and it wasn’t just people in New York in this community. Emails came from all over the country, from people who are Muslim and who never felt represented in the mainstream media. It opened up the community and people’s understanding of the community. So, while I don’t know that that’s necessarily my greatest work by some measures, I think it’s one of several important things I’ve done.

The other story that comes to mind is one I did on the diversity of religion in New York.

I think there are profound misunderstandings when it comes to religion – which is probably why I am drawn to covering it. And I think it’s really important for humanity that people understand each other. I think what photography can do brilliantly is show that people are basically the same. It’s not that our differences are unimportant. But at the core, we all want the same things. And that’s what photography can do. And it’s one of the underpinnings of my belief in the power of photography: to show our shared humanity. 

Photo credit: James Estrin/The New York Times

How do you get people to trust you and to let them in, especially when the subject matter is sensitive or deeply personal?

There’s a few things that are very important. One, people can read through you if you’re misleading them. So don’t do that. Two, you need to give people a reason why they should let you in. The religion story we did for example, the way I got people to let us in was to say that I believe that most people do not understand religious devotion, and even if they do, they only understand their own religion – not others. And I needed their help to tell their story so that others can better understand them.

You need to have some buy-in. That’s very important. You really have to be trustworthy. It’s just that simple. You have to be sincere when you’re doing these intimate stories. When you’re in journalism school, one of the first things you learn is that you have to be removed when you’re doing a story. You can’t be involved in the story. But when you’re doing an intimate story, you have to give something of yourself. You are asking people to reveal themselves completely, be, not physically, but emotionally and psychologically naked in front of you. And so you give something of yourself in return.

The other thing is that for 95% of what I cover, I am an outsider, and while I believe in the power of insider storytelling, I think good storytellers have to be able to tell stories outside of their own communities. And to do that you have to approach people with humility. And that’s really the key. You have to approach everyone as an equal, as if we are all on the same level – it can be the most powerful person in the world or the least powerful person in the world. This goes back to the idea of shared humanity; we all have common things if you look for them. I try to find those things to build a relationship with my subject, whether it’s a 15-minute portrait or a several month-long intimate story. 

How do you feel that your work has kind of shaped your view of humanity in the world?

I’ve had the opportunity to see a lot of life through my work. You get in people’s lives in a way you wouldn’t normally through this job. You go to places you wouldn’t normally go to. And even though I believed this before, the work that I’ve done has really driven home the shared humanity in us all. Meeting and learning about people has been as rewarding as the photographs themselves. It’s just a profound gift to be able to encounter life like this.

Are there certain stories or like areas of interest that you’re hoping to do more of in the future?

I want to do stories that haven’t been done. Another important story I’ve done, was in 2004. I’d been trying for five years to do a story on legal assisted suicide. And I was able to, in Oregon finally. I did it without a reporter originally. So, part of it was my writing. But no one had ever photographed and published photographs of a legally assisted suicide. But it was a profoundly important story at the time. There were a couple of photographers who did assisted suicide stories during the AIDS crisis in the late 1980s before it was legal anywhere in the U.S. So to answer your question, I don’t have a specific type of story, just whatever feels meaningful and important at the time.

Are there things that you are happy to see in terms of the way the world is evolving around visual storytelling and are there things that worry you? 

I’m very happy to see that with the web, visual storytelling has taken on a far more important role. I feel like I’ve been fighting for this for 33 years at The New York Times. Now visually driven stories are very important at the Times. When it comes to developments like AI, we don’t know exactly how AI plays out, but I believe AI will further harm people’s belief that a photograph is truthful. So, I’m very weary of AI, for both video and still photography.

The biggest fear I have is really that facts may not matter anymore. And I’ve devoted my life and career to the belief that they would. That if you report things in a truthful and accurate manner they will have an impact. People at least won’t be able to say they didn’t know. But now, I’m not convinced with the collapse – never used that word before in this context – but the collapse of parts of the media, I just don’t know that facts will still matter in the way they did. That scares me. My boss, and the Times’ publisher, A.G. Sulzberger, who I have very high regard for, said he actually believes that for us, the position that we have is going to be for people who want fact-based reporting. And when I say AI, I’m talking about generative AI, not AI as a tool which we employ in investigative reporting. It’s the former that worries me deeply. As I get older, my concern grows about the difficulty of doing work that is even in the neighborhood of accuracy. Of being truthful. And all the complexities around that. I’m not saying it’s impossible. But I know I find myself questioning myself more frequently and much more profoundly than I did 25 years ago.

Something I am glad to see though is the shift around understandings of how traumatic this job can be. I’m of a generation where, to be a photojournalist, was to be tough, you didn’t talk about the trauma of the job. Fortunately, that really started to change during the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. So many photographers came back with PTSD and needed to get help for it and that finally started to change the narrative around people being able to talk about just how traumatizing this work can be. 

What advice do you have for young storytellers?

You need to have a multitude of skills. That doesn’t mean you need to be an expert in video, audio, writing and photography. But you need to be an expert in one, if not two. But the key here is not to think of it as a burden but as a profound opportunity, and something that makes you a better storyteller. You have more arrows in your quiver. It’s always been the case in this industry that to make it work you have to be agile – I started freelancing at The Times in 1987. I freelanced for four and a half years before I got hired and I’ve been there ever since. I’ve seen so much change since then. We started transmitting photographs in 1994 off negatives and in 1996 we started using digital cameras. They were far inferior cameras, but the speed was important. Then starting in 2001, photographs became much more important. Both in print and online. What I did not know about online is that it would make visuals – photos and video – as important as words if not more so. I’m not saying that’s a good thing. The web opened up the ability to do things large. Not just three photos but if it deserves it, it could be 20. And you could do it outside of a large institution as well. My point is that with the changing times you need to be able to adapt, be ahead of the curve. Both because it’s more interesting and also more effective. 

Also, you should always try to do the work that you’re passionate about. It won’t always be possible, but whenever you can, do stories that you care about. You’re not likely to get rich at this. If you’re fortunate, you can make a living, and it will be a meaningful life.