Michelle Kanaar, Alyssa Schukar and Michael Zajakowski founded Prism in 2019. Since then, the free workshop and portfolio reviews have engaged with nearly a thousand visual reporters and editors who reflect the diversity of our communities through four workshops. Our now yearly workshop mixes inspiration with practical advice, including essential business guidance on providing quotes, navigating contracts and invoices, applying for grants and delivering imagery on deadline. We offer this programming to ensure that emerging visual reporters from marginalized communities can remain in the industry. These peer support systems – which encourage collaboration on edits, equipment, assisting and more – are an important part of freelance sustainability. 

The workshop also offers emerging and established photographers paid opportunities to engage with new audiences and develop their teaching and speaking abilities, cultivating diverse visual journalism leaders of the future. Currently, only 18.8% of newsroom leaders in the U.S. identify as people of color, according to the most recent ASNE survey. Past speakers include Kayla Bickham, Alex Garcia, Gonzalo Guzman, Sebastian Hidalgo, David Johnson, Tonika Johnson, Oriana Koren, Joshua Lott, Paul Octavious, Danielle Scruggs, Tonal Simmons, Diana Solís and Adrian Octavius Walker. 

In 2024, Prism workshop co-directors Michelle Kanaar and Alyssa Schukar were awarded a Reynolds Journalism Institute fellowship to create a free online toolkit for local newsrooms without visual staff to better work with freelance visual journalists with an emphasis on diversity and equity and to utilize visuals for increased engagement and revenue. This is the other half of Prism’s effort to promote equity in the relationships between newsrooms and freelancers. 

Prism has received funding from individuals, foundations and corporations, such as the Chris Hondros Fund, the Field Foundation and Sony Cameras. The workshop has partnered with various institutions to foster a more equitable industry for underrepresented visual reporters by promoting fair working conditions and prioritizing the hiring and inclusion of visual reporters who better reflect the communities they cover. Some of our partners include individuals from The Authority Collective, TrueChicago, Columbia College, DePaul University, the American Society of Media Photographers and The National Press Photographers Foundation. 

We also collaborate with editors at local and national news outlets from both traditional and emerging news backgrounds to make equity-minded structural changes at those institutions as well as connect editors with more diverse visual reporters. Outlets we have worked with include The Chicago Tribune, The Chicago-Sun Times, Borderless Magazine, Cicero Independiente, South Side Weekly, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

Our work at Prism Photo Workshop is rooted in training visual reporters and creating field sustainability for journalists from marginalized communities. We recognize that the visual journalism industry can only become more equitable, inclusive and diverse once we build systems that address the financial pressures and hardships inherent to freelance careers.