By Michael Hall
Aaron Huey recently spoke at UC Santa Barbara about his journey from impassioned photojournalist to leader of one of one of the world’s largest art movements.
The talk, titled “Art as Compass,” was hosted by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center. It recounted how Huey went from taking photos for National Geographic to founding Amplifier.org, a non-profit dedicated to the mass dissemination of art which amplifies voices that otherwise would go unheard.
Huey began by describing his work covering the aftermath of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars for The New Yorker and The New York Times. “I’m starting here because it’s where I really started going deep enough to get scared,” he said.
Photojournalist and activist Aaron Huey delivering a talk on the power of art for social change at UC Santa Barbara’s Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.
Huey noted how the more exposure his work received, the deeper he dove into each subject.
But it wasn’t until an assignment to photograph Prisoner of War Camp #334 in South Dakota, or as it is known now, the “Pine Ridge Indian Reservation,” that Huey was changed for good.
Pine Ridge was originally a prisoner of war camp for Sioux and Lakota Native Americans established in 1890 to suppress flourishing indigenous religious tradition. When the indigenous people refused to stop practicing their religion, U.S. Armed Forces opened fire on and killed around 300 of the Native Americans, including women and children.
This event became known as the now infamous Wounded Knee Massacre.
Today, Pine Ridge is one of the poorest communities in America, with some of the highest unemployment and school drop-out rates and lowest life expectancies nationwide. And initially, this was the angle Huey planned on covering for National Geographic. But after spending time with the locals, he saw things differently.
“Over time, it became clear to me that those statistics came from a deep historical moment,” said Huey. “Once I understood that, I stopped telling a story about poverty and gangs and statistics, and I started to tell a story about a prisoner of war camp — one where prisoners are still born long after the guards are gone.”
He felt the story needed him to “go beyond” today’s news and his own “aesthetic images and filter.”
“As a journalist, I know that the best stories — or the best parts of those stories — end up on the cutting room floor because they just aren’t newsworthy or flashy or violent enough,” Huey said. “The communities we report on know this, and when we leave, they’re left wondering not ‘if’ but ‘how’ they will be misrepresented.”
To combat this, Huey, alongside internet artist Jonathan Harris, developed a way for the citizens of Pine Ridge to post their own unedited stories to augment the story on National Geographic’s website. Over 300 stories, ranging in topic from racist encounters to high school dances, were posted by Lakota people.
“This project was more about redesigning relationships between communities and big media than it was designing a digital platform,'' said Huey. “This way of joining professional storytelling with community generated work is the perfect way to tell a story as complex as Pine Ridge. And a lot of stories are as complex as Pine Ridge in our world.”
After delivering a TED Talk about his experience with the Lakota people, Huey realized that he needed to step away from journalism. He could no longer remain objective.
A design by street artist Shepard Fairey, based on a photo by Aaron Huey taken during his stay at Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.
Shortly thereafter, he began working on one of the most prolific street art campaigns ever created. Huey teamed up with Shepard Fairey, the man behind the iconic Obama “Hope” poster and the “Obey” skater clothing line, to start building a movement for treaty and land rights for the Lakota.
Fairey turned Huey’s photographs of the Lakota people, as well as their messages, into posters. The posters they made were posted online and available for download for free.
And after finding success with this first campaign, Huey and Fairey began branching into other areas of social justice, including immigration reform and criminal justice reform. After they started mass producing these posters to meet high demands, they formed Amplifier.org. “We wanted to make an art machine that churned out art for social change,” said Huey.
He says there are many benefits to running a street campaign versus posting ads on social media. “[The posters] don’t get shifted around by algorithms that move social media and the news algorithms that show us what they think we want to see. Art like this has a power to wake people in a way that I think journalism can’t.”
Following the 2016 election, those at Amplifier knew their next target would be inauguration day. So over four nights, Huey hosted “language labs” which hosted artists, organizers, journalists, poets and other leaders to nail down exactly what they would be saying. Eventually they decided on phrases such as “We the People,” which “couldn’t be pegged to any political party.”
To skirt around restrictions which prohibited banners or posters along the inaugural route, Amplifier cleverly thought of placing its art in the country's biggest newspapers, including USA Today and The New York Times. And after running a record-setting Kickstarter campaign to place the ads, protestors took to the streets all across America with Amplifier’s art.
But protestors weren’t just carrying the newspapers in which Amplifier ran ads. “What surprised us was that we saw pictures of all these prints of all these sizes that we did not distribute,” said Huey. “Local print shops and personal printers in all of these places were working overtime to print the art the protestors downloaded from the website.”
A week before the multi-city women’s marches in 2017, people in 193 countries downloaded art from Amplifier, with over 20 million page views. And because of its accessibility, people were able to creatively adapt the art into things like dresses, quilts and tattoos.
Climber and photographer Cory Richards posing with a poster from Amplifier.org on Mt. Everest’s summit.
The movement’s reach was undeniable. Protestors were wielding the art in Germany, Malaysia, and even the summit of Everest. “It was a sea of art unlike anything we had seen,” said Huey.
To keep its tradition of airing community voices, Amplifier also put out an open call for submissions of designs for the women’s march. And although only five out of 6,000 made it into mass production and distribution, the designs, including some that weren’t picked, are still available for free download. Amplifier also designed contests for March for Our Lives, the protests against gun violence.
“The incredible diversity of aesthetics and perspectives we see when we look at the results of these open calls — I see that same kind of diversity that was needed when I was doing Pine Ridge. There’s so many ways to tell these stories than I can see or one artist can see.”
Huey can also see the journalistic value of running these campaigns. “When I was covering events,” said Huey, “I remember trying to find things that would visually anchor my frames. I was looking for people who had a symbol for what I was fighting for. The New York Times wants to photograph a kid holding that art more than a big mass mob of human bodies.”
Protesters during the 2017 Women’s March in Washington, D.C. carrying “We the People” signs from Amplifier.org.
Today, Amplifier is working to increasingly include children in its campaigns, providing teachers with posters, as well as developing augmented and virtual reality “talking art” experiences alongside Microsoft and Flipgrid.
The value of street art is unparalleled, says Huey, especially when it’s tackling highly political issues in highly partisan times.
“It doesn’t care what you want to see on your way to work. It’s there to confront you. It steals the space. It’s a megaphone for voices that need amplifying. It’s a bridge that can unite movements that share values and common symbols that other mediums can’t. It is a compass pointing to the future that we want to believe in.”
Michael Hall is a fourth year Film and Media Studies major at UC Santa Barbara. He is a Web and Social Media Intern at the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.