Stronger Together

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March 21, 2025

Dear SDN community:

The challenges we are facing today are likely the most difficult we have known in our lifetime. But in times like this, it is important that the community of people committed to human rights, truth, and human dignity stick together, follow our moral compass, and speak loudly about what we know is true and right.
 
The abuses of power and assaults against the U.S. Constitution that the newly installed Administration has committed in just two months in power are overwhelming and we feel that SDN has a responsibility to respond.

Social Documentary Network (SDN) has always supported  a long-term civil rights agenda that embraces diversity in all of its forms. We believe in the power of inclusion and that everyone’s story deserves to be told. We believe that climate change is real and clean energy is the future. We believe that immigrants make this nation stronger. We believe that the U.S. is stronger when other nations throughout the world are healthy, safe, and have strong democracies. We believe in human rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, Indigenous People’s rights, and disability rights.We believe in a free press and free expression and perhaps most importantly, we believe in dignity and truth.

All of these issues and more have been presented by the global documentary photography community on the SDN website since our founding in 2008 and in ZEKE magazine since our first issue in 2015.

All of these issues are now under threat.

SDN remains committed to embracing these stories in all of our programming, including publishing them in ZEKE magazine, on the SDN website, on social media, and in our many public programs, including our Spring Visual Storytelling Festival.
 
The guiding principles of truth and dignity remain at the center of SDN’s mission. We look to our members from the U.S. and across the world to continue to submit their documentary projects to SDN and we will do our best to further promote these stories both to U.S. and international audiences.

Small independent organizations like SDN and ZEKE are critical in the battle for truth. We also embrace the need to build a collective opposition among the visual storytelling community to counter the disinformation coming from so many fronts including directly from the White House and acquiescent media supporting the MAGA agenda. SDN remains committed to providing a platform to nurture and support this global documentary community. In short, we are here for you.

Please continue to share your stories at www.socialdocumentary.net and we will continue to publish them on the various platforms available to use.
 
Thank you for all that you do.

Godspeed.
 
Social Documentary Network

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