Anderson's photo essay from Afghanistan will be featured in Visual Communication Quarterly,
the peer-reviewed official journal of the Association for Education in Journalism
and Mass Communication's Visual Communication Division. Anderson says, "As the United
States withdrew from two decades of military involvement in Afghanistan, I was drawn
to reflect on my time covering the war and American efforts to grasp and transform
Afghan society. The style of this photo essay is a departure from my typical work
for newspapers and magazines. I shot the entire series from the back seat of a car
as I moved around the country from one news assignment to the next. The car was my
liminal space. I set my camera to slow shutter speeds, 1/30 or 1/60 of a second, far
too slow to get sharp images of moving subjects from a steady camera in a moving car.
To achieve any focus at all I had to put my camera in motion as well, following my
subjects as faithfully as possible for the duration of the open shutter. The result
is a series of anonymous portraits of Afghan people navigating daily life amid a background
in swirling motion."
Anderson's half-hour documentary film, Beyond Conviction, produced on commission for
Independent Television Service (ITVS) for the Independent Lens series, will premiere
in broadcast on public television on October 19, 2021. The film is a work of solutions
journalism, which traces the innovative work of a rural Texas DA to address the endemic
problems of family violence. October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. ITVS, funded
by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, supports documentary film production for
distribution through PBS and American Public Media.
University of North Texas 
