In local journalism, photographs are often treated as proof of presence: one frame to anchor a story, one gallery to support a package, one image to make a difficult issue feel approachable. At The Current, an independent newsroom covering coastal Georgia, visual journalism is doing something deeper. It is expanding the newsroom’s map of the communities it serves.
CatchLight Local and Report for America fellow Justin Taylor has photographed environmental threats, immigration, parades, cultural gatherings and moments of joy across Savannah and the coast. He grew up in the region, but the work has made familiar ground newly visible.
“Working at The Current, and covering Coastal Georgia has really opened my eyes to how diverse of an area it is when it comes to cultures and communities,” Taylor said. “There are parts of the area that I never got to see growing up here, and now I get to not only engage with the people, but help tell those stories.”
“The idea came from something we had kind of already started doing a few months earlier, where I had all these photos that I was taking, and they just didn’t have a home,” Taylor said.
Coastal Lens gave readers another way into the region. A Vietnamese American Lunar New Year celebration, a Cherokee of Georgia powwow, a prom for people with special needs, the ecosystems of the Okefenokee Swamp — each visual story asks audiences to look again at the place they think they know…