Visual Connection: Storytelling and Mentorship
Immediate past president of the National Press Photographers Association Carey Wagner ’96 uses photography, film, and mentorship to connect communities and inspire the next generation of storytellers.
BY KATE DUNLOP
With a few hours to kill before picking up her friend at the airport, Carey Wagner ’96 looked around the small Montana town where she found herself. No coffee shops, no obvious space to hang out. She decided to get a manicure — the worst one she’s ever had, but by the time the polish was dry, she’d gotten all the local dirt from her manicurist and the barber working at the next station over, and she left the salon feeling like she knew something about them and their community. It’s what she does as an award-winning Brooklyn-based documentary photographer, filmmaker and educator who just completed a one-year term as the president of the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA): take every opportunity to listen and connect.
Long before earning those titles and working on print and video projects as varied as covering the New York City deathcare community during the pandemic for TIME, gender violence in Papua New Guinea for The New York Times, and Muslim women running businesses in Indonesia for PRI’s The World, Wagner was a student in the late Karen Smith’s photography class at St. Paul’s School. She was also an intern at the Concord Monitor, where she shot side by side with staff photographer Denise Sanchez during the presidential primary (and ultimately disregarded her advice to do anything but become a photojournalist).
Wagner’s forays into the greater Concord community, and New Hampshire at large, introduced her to all kinds of towns and people outside what she calls the SPS bubble. It was the beginning of her awareness that storytelling can take one into a community and help build one while working with likeminded partners. That awareness grew throughout her years at University of California, Berkely, where she studied cognitive science and Spanish and served as the photo editor for the student newspaper.
“I had constant deadlines, I was producing something, it was creative,” she says of those formative days. “It combined my love of being physical with observing people, being out and about, getting to know the community. It was fun, too.”
Wagner gave herself two years to work in newspapers and after 9/11, landed a job at a tiny paper in California. For the next 10 years, at California and Florida papers, she covered everything from sports to the unhoused to the impact of methamphetamines on individuals and communities.
“There’s a lot of improv when you’re working on stories; you don’t always know what you’re going to find, and that appealed to me,” she says. “There’s a lot of creativity in storytelling and meeting people and trying to depict what the writer is talking about or finding your own way to communicate visually what’s going on.”
Instrumental in launching and sustaining her career was the mentorship of photojournalist John McDermott (everything is negotiable was one lesson), and now mentoring others is a big part of what Wagner enjoys.
“Guidance, for John, was so simple, and you realize it’s just not that hard; when people say ‘I can’t be a mentor because what do I know’ … yes, you can! There are things that are second nature to you that someone doing it for the first time needs to know,” she says. “John reminds me that I need to give back, so I’ve always volunteered and donate what I can. It comes back to St. Paul’s and acts of service. Ultimately, it’s not about what you did but how you can help others shine in their own lives.”
Wagner’s term as president of the NPPA — the culmination of a long affiliation that began with volunteering in the nonprofit’s mentorship program and service as a regional chair — was devoted to helping others shine. The role became a second full-time job, but she relished the even broader community she found, and created, through the opportunity.
Now, she’s returned to concentrating on running her business and working with editorial, nonprofit and commercial clients; her recent storytelling has focused on social emotional learning in public education, narrowing the gender gap in tech, financing women entrepreneurs in Peru and connecting with a growing refugee population worldwide.
“I’m a woman business entrepreneur in New York,” she says. “It’s not easy, but I meet amazing people all the time, women and men who are really defying the odds and redefining things.” Wagner says her job feels particularly important now, during a period when journalism is facing unprecedented scrutiny. “I really do believe that it’s important for us to share the truth of what’s going on around us as best we can.”