Fresh, organic photography talent
Mentor SURENDRA LAWOTI + mentee JOEL RODRIGUEZ navigate documentary photography storytelling BY HEATHER MORTON
From the Certified Organic project. Pears are one of the only fruits that must be picked unripe and are allowed to ripen off the tree.
Left, Joel Rodriguez and, right Surendra Lawoti.
THE BIPOC PHOTO MENTORSHIP PROGRAM is just over two years old and, in that time, we have facilitated over 200 mentorship opportunities with almost 100 mentors from various areas of the photo industry and from all over the world. One of our most exciting initiatives was a collaboration with Toronto-based organization Gallery 44. During this program, mentee Joel Rodriguez was matched with mentor Surendra Lawoti and they spent three months working together on the production of Joel’s documentary project Certified Organic, an exploration of food production and regenerative agriculture in Canada. Both Joel and Surendra are working from an activist perspective and, though they both use a documentary approach, their practices are unique.
Joel relates that the mentorship opportunity came at the perfect time in his process. “My mentor Surendra Lawoti and I spoke at great length about various approaches I could take. His experience with large format photography really opened my eyes to new directions in the genre. Surendra helped me deconstruct my compositional choices and really pushed me to embrace the nuances that can be accentuated within a frame. I quickly learned that good critique most commonly poses more questions rather than direct assumptions.” photo ED 13
