Lecture Series
Earning Access: Trust and Visual Storytelling
What does it take to be invited into someone’s life—and stay there?
This panel explores how visual storytellers earn access, set expectations, and build trust to tell deeply human stories. From first introductions to long-term relationships, the conversation looks at the ethical, emotional, and practical decisions that shape work beyond the surface.
Join Erin Clark, Jessica Rinaldi, and Craig F. Walker in conversation with moderator William Snyder for real-world insight into transparency, consent, and responsibility, and why trust remains the foundation of powerful documentary storytelling.
Speakers
Erin Clark
The Boston globe
Erin Clark is a staff photographer at The Boston Globe, where she focuses on long-form, community-centered visual storytelling across New England. Her work often explores how policy, place, and social systems shape people’s daily lives, with an emphasis on stories that unfold over time.
Clark joined the Globe in 2019 and has reported on a wide range of subjects, including housing insecurity, immigration enforcement, public health, and community life. She is particularly drawn to character-driven projects that combine intimate access with sustained reporting.
Her work has been recognized by Pictures of the Year International, the National Press Photographers Association, and the Boston Press Photographers Association, and has received recognition from the Pulitzer Prize jury.
Jessica Rinaldi
The Boston Globe
Jessica Rinaldi is a staff photographer for The Boston Globe. In 2016 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Photography for The Life and Times of Strider Wolf and was also named a Pulitzer Finalist in the same category. Prior to joining The Boston Globe she spent ten years as a contract photographer for Reuters based in Boston, Dallas and New York City. She has a B.S. in Journalism from Boston University.
Craig F Walker
The Boston Globe
Craig F. Walker is a staff photographer for The Boston Globe. Prior to joining the Globe in 2015, he worked at the Denver Post for 17 years. Before his time out west, Walker was a photographer at Massachusetts newspapers the Berkshire Eagle and The Marlboro Enterprise. In 2010 Walker’s photo essay Ian Fisher: American Soldier, an “intimate portrait of a teenager who joins the Army at the height of insurgent violence in Iraq, poignantly searching for meaning and manhood,” won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography. The story was also exhibited at Visa pour l’Image: International Festival of Photojournalism in Perpignan, France. Two years later Walker was awarded a second Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for Welcome Home, The Story of Scott Ostrom, a “compassionate chronicle of an honorably discharged veteran, home from Iraq and struggling with a severe case of post-traumatic stress, images that enable viewers to better grasp a national issue.” The same year, Walker was also named Newspaper Photographer of the Year in the Pictures of the Year International competition. Walker’s photo essay, Raising Connor, was a 2019 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography, “for superb photography and sophisticated visual storytelling that brought understanding to the story of a young boy living with a complex developmental disability.” That year, Walker was also named Photographer of the Year by the Boston Press Photographers Association