Restoring the flow: East Texans ‘spring’ into action - The Tyler Loop

Watershed stewardship at the hands of one person can have a meaningful impact on the health of an ecosystem. The benefits of habitat restoration and water preservation within a watershed range from increased biodiversity and water filtration to flood and erosion control. In partnership with The Tyler Loop, our latest collaboration looks at the work of some East Texans to preserve water sources in their communities through this report by Govinda Dass.

Dr. Robert Bullard and the Environmental Justice Movement - Texas Observer + The Nation

Dr. Robert Bullard is one of the foremost researchers and authors of the environmental justice movement. After 40 years of scholarship on the topic, Dr. Bullard was awarded a Lifetime Achieve award by the United Nations Environment Program in December 2020. In our latest collaboration, Deep Indigo created pictures and conducted photo search for a profile of Dr. Bullard written by Amal Ahmed of the Texas Observer, and was published in both the Observer and The Nation.

Extreme Weather Brought Tyler's Aging Water Utility into Focus - The Tyler Loop

Some Tyler, Texas, residents questioned municipal tap water quality before the city issued a boil water notice during the extreme winter weather that affected much of the state in February. The weather’s impacts were a reminder that Tyler’s nearly 100-year-old water utility is due for upgrades. Deep Indigo picked it up there with our partner The Tyler Loop for this account from the East Texas city.

Winter Storm Impacts on Low-Income Texans - Texas Observer + Southerly

The extreme winter weather that blanketed Texas in February forced residents to confront vulnerabilities caused by protracted sub-freezing temperatures. People across the state struggled without electricity and water in frigid dwellings, survived off of cutting trees and bottled water drives, and cleaned after burst pipes. During this crisis, we joined editorial partners at the Texas Observer and Southerly to report on some of the most vulnerable in Texas and the US South.

Environmental Justice: Marsha Jackson and Shingle Mountain - Texas Observer

Deep Indigo Collective is thrilled to see the publishing of our first visual storytelling partnership. Our introductory coverage supported reporting by The Texas Observer on disproportionate exposure of Black and Latinx neighborhoods to pollutants in southern Dallas and the effort to remove Shingle Mountain.

Dr. Robert Bullard and the Environmental Justice Movement

In partnership with the Texas Observer

Dr. Robert Bullard is one of the foremost researchers and authors of the environmental justice movement. After 40 years of scholarship on the topic, Dr. Bullard was awarded a Lifetime Achieve award by the United Nations Environment Program in December 2020. “Professor Bullard’s work has, in my view, ushered in a third wave of the human rights movement, with growing recognition that all people have a human right to a healthy environment,” said Inger Andersen, the executive director of the UN’s Environment Program. In our latest collaboration, Deep Indigo created pictures and conducted photo search for a profile of Dr. Bullard written by Amal Ahmed of the Texas Observer, and was published in both the Observer and The Nation.

June 2, 2021: Amal’s detailed reporting leads her audience through the milestones of Dr. Bullard’s career, while revealing the evolution of the environmental justice movement. We learn how Dr. Bullard researched the discriminatory placement of landfills in Houston, when Dr. Bullard and colleagues created the 17 principles of environmental justice, and when Dr. Bullard was in the room with President Bill Clinton when Clinton signed an executive order for the federal government to recognized environmental injustices across the United States. We also read that Dr. Bullard and his colleagues were dismissed by traditional environmental groups, how the 1992 Environmental Justice Act never got a hearing in Congress, that even today “low-income communities of color are significantly more likely than white residents to live near hazardous waste and air pollution,” even as younger activists like the Sunrise Movement are continuing to advocate for environmental justice.

It was important we contributed visuals that support the timeline and milestones highlighted in the story. Through a bit of photo research, Dr. Bullard personal archive linked images to certain moments. These images ranged from an environmental racism protest at a Houston landfill in 1979 to joining the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Climate Change Consortium students at the Peoples' Climate March in New York City in 2014. In addition, we met Dr. Bullard on campus to make portraits of the professor and to document him continuing his academic work. Like many during the COVID-19 pandemic, his work is done virtually in his university or home office. During our visit, Dr. Bullard was photographed conducting a discussion with writing students at Iowa State University, his alma mater, on the subject of environmental justice.

Please take a look at more of the our coverage below and then take the time to read through Amal’s thorough reporting. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us. We are looking forward to hearing from you, and working with your newsroom to create the images that best illustrate the environmental and climate issues you are planning to report.

-Andy Jacobsohn, Executive Director

(Rights to these images belong to Deep Indigo Collective. Please contact the nonprofit to license this content.)

Extreme Weather Brought Tyler's Aging Water Utility into Focus

In partnership with The Tyler Loop

Some Tyler, Texas, residents questioned municipal tap water quality before the city issued a boil water notice during the extreme winter weather that affected much of the state in February. The weather’s impacts were a reminder that Tyler’s nearly 100-year-old water utility is due for upgrades. Deep Indigo picked it up there with our partner The Tyler Loop for this account from the East Texas city.

April 18, 2021: While ruminating about how Deep Indigo could best serve newsrooms and their readers at launch, one of the points we landed on was to create a visual resource contributing to detailed takes during or in the wake of rapidly unfolding, multidimensional natural crises. We were satisfied to see that approach successfully unfold in our latest collaboration. For this particular story, while the state was thawing and Tyler was still under a boil water notice, Deep Indigo and the Tyler Loop started considering the strongest angles to immediately follow up on the impact upon Tylerites.

Tyler experienced 111 water main breaks due to the sub-freezing temperatures. Residents cleaned up after burst pipes and were instructed to boil water in their homes. These experiences reminded those already skeptical of the Tyler Water Utility of the desire for clearer, cleaner water, transparency by the city government and for upgrades to aging infrastructure. Sarah A. Miller, who both wrote and photographed the story, constructed the piece around the various experiences of several Tylerites. Sarah’s extensive knowledge of Tyler built from her nearly10 years as a local photojournalist elevated the reporting of this crucial story. She created a strong collection of images that includes the direct impact of the freeze upon the city waterlines and in homes, how individuals live who are skeptical of the water quality and the people whose livelihoods are contingent on water. The story also featured residents that were unable to make immediate plumber repairs following the thaw, and one that continued to use city water after failing to be informed of the boil notice.

The severity and implications of the freezing temperatures across Texas was an eye-opening event to many. The failure of the power grid was one of the most visible disasters of the February weather. Yet, the biggest realization was that Texas, in the way property and infrastructure is currently built, is not ready to withstand another persistent deep freeze. Deep Indigo is devoted to helping newsrooms publish stories as the demand for climate-resilient infrastructure become a requirements in the run up to greater frequency of extreme weather.

-Andy Jacobsohn, Executive Director

(Rights to these images belong to Deep Indigo Collective. Please contact the nonprofit to license this content.)

Winter Storm Impacts on Low-Income Texans

In partnership with Texas Observer + Southerly

The extreme winter weather that blanketed Texas in February forced residents to confront vulnerabilities caused by protracted sub-freezing temperatures. People across the state struggled without electricity and water in frigid dwellings, survived off of cutting trees and bottled water drives, and cleaned after burst pipes. During this crisis, we joined editorial partners at the Texas Observer and Southerly to report on some of the most vulnerable in Texas and the US South.

March 19, 2021: Deep Indigo Collective produced a series of photographs from the Dallas Housing Authority’s Lakeview Townhomes for Amal Ahmed’s reporting on the disadvantages low-income households face with regard to energy efficiency and extreme temperatures. The reporting underscores that while some low-income Texans feel too cold in their home during mild winters due to poor insulation and energy savings, federal programs intended to weatherize these homes have been unable to reach the most in need. The hardships faced during the deep freeze do not end when surrounding begin to thaw. Households without insurance will go on to cover the cost to repair damaged home and replace belongings.

From our close vantage point, as a newsroom based in Texas, conditions in mid-February were rapidly developing for nearly two weeks. (We, too, had to respond to loosing electricity and water, and in the moment find a way to keep our family safe and warm.) In a short amount of time, Texans’ concerns shifted from two rounds of snow and ice to nearly a week of sub-freezing temperatures without electricity or water then boil water notices and the patchy, discouraging process of the power coming back online.

Even as news break and circumstances remain fast-changing, Deep Indigo is dedicated to working closely with our partners to get the visuals needed to report the news of the moment to the community they serve. Please contact us if you were interested in learning more about how Deep Indigo Collective can help serve your readers with original, time sensitive visual coverage when breaking news impacts your community.

-Andy Jacobsohn, Executive Director

(Rights to these images belong to Deep Indigo Collective. Please contact the nonprofit to license this content.)

Continued Shingle Mountain Coverage

In partnership with Green Source DFW

Deep Indigo’s coverage of Shingle Mountain continued in a new partnership. Green Source DFW collaborated with the nonprofit as environmental justice activists applied pressure to the City of Dallas to prioritize the removal of the toxic waste dump.

Oct. 13, 2020: Southern Sector Rising, an environmental justice organization, gave the City of Dallas an October 1 deadline to clean up the roofing shingle dump site south of downtown. On the eve of the deadline, the group placed “warning” signs with a scull and crossbones along the perimeter of the site and wrote on their Facebook page that the “community did what government won't: Label Shingle Mountain a Public Health Hazard.” With bids submitted to the city for the clean up, the group led a demonstration to Dallas City Hall on October 12, where activists delivered fiery pleas directed at city officials and discarded roofing shingles in a city vehicle. Be sure to read the coverage by Green Source.

The images created in this collaboration reveal the extraordinary measures a community assumes to capture the attention of city leadership to correct a public health violation. We believe these images attest to the fight’s intensity. As the people present compel the city to action as the dump site continues to harm residents after nearly three years. Please review the images below, and be sure ask us know how Deep Indigo can be your newsroom’s partner in covering similar topics in your community.

(Rights to these images belong to Deep Indigo Collective. Please contact the nonprofit to license this content.)

Deep Indigo Collective is thrilled to see the publishing of our first visual storytelling partnership. Our introductory coverage supported reporting by The Texas Observer on disproportionate exposure of Black and Latinx neighborhoods to pollutants in southern Dallas and the effort to remove Shingle Mountain.

Sept. 14, 2020: Our nonprofit was established with a conviction for visual storytelling’s ability to inform audiences of critical issues. The nonprofit is a proponent of photojournalism as an essential instrument in communicating the climate crisis and environmental threats of all kinds. Looking at the challenges facing life on Earth and the troubles in the local news industry, the Collective launched a model supporting environmental reporting in communities across the United States. These partnerships are created for under-resourced newsrooms seeking to enhance reporting with exclusive and original photography and videography. We are hopeful that, piece-by-piece, alternative methods of generating local coverage will provide greater access to crucial reporting for news-vulnerable audiences.

As a startup news organization, it was a privilege for us to partner with The Observer on a story drawing attention to environmental justice concerns in Dallas. Reporter Amal Ahmed centered the piece on the experience of resident Marsha Jackson, who is living with a immense, illegal roofing shingle dump within yards of her home, and the concentration of industrial pollution around Black and Latinx neighborhoods in southern Dallas. Deep Indigo created a collection of photographs illustrating the magnitude of Shingle Mountain and its proximity to Jackson and her neighbors, in addition to images chronicling the juxtaposition of industry and the Joppa neighborhood.

Below, we’ve included the photo spread with our coverage from The Observer’s September/October 2020 issue, as well as coverage outtakes that didn’t make the print or online editions. Be sure to read the alarming reporting by Amal. Please feel free to reach out to us directly if you or your news organization are interested in receiving help with visual coverage for any upcoming environmental story.

(Rights to these images belong to Deep Indigo Collective. Please contact the nonprofit to license this content.)