I wish that everyone could spend just five minutes, or five hours, with the people that I have photographed throughout the years, and get a sense of their culture, what they’ve been through, and what they have lost.

What is always so overwhelming is they still have their dignity, pride, and hospitality—it makes you feel really humble.

One person or one photographer cannot change a crisis, but my hope is that from the images I take home and share with the world…something will spark and srpead to a social movement.

Photographers cannot carry the burden of all the crises they photograph with them. That’s not what they’re there for, and that won’t help the people that are in their images. You’re there in that moment of time in history to record their stories in the most honest and sincere way possible.

My entire budget to work in Chad and Darfur for over three months in 2004 was $2,700. That included airfare from my home in San Francisco to the capital of Chad. Meanwhile, mainstream media, with all its resources, chose to ignore Darfur at the height of the crisis in 2004, and continues to ignore it to this day.

What I have learned during the five years of touring around the country, sharing my photographs, and screening my documentary film, is that editors of newspapers and magazines, advertisers, and media moguls have it all wrong. Their consumers really do care about human rights issues and international issues. Despite the media’s negligence, the presence of a photographer still makes it possible for all of us to be there.