Photojournalist Brendan Bannon visited Bakersfield College during the week of Oct. 4, capping off his visit with a discussion in the Levan Institute on Oct. 6.
More than 150 members of the BC student body and faculty crowded inside the Levan Institute to view Bannon’s presentation. The Daily Telegraph’s Mike Pflanz, who has been working with Bannon in Africa for the past five years according to the pair, accompanied Bannon.
The presentation showcased multimedia projects put together by Bannon for organizations such as the United Nations. The projects were focused on the lives of refugees within refugee camps.
“The photography assignments were designed to allow the kids to fully explore the range of human experience,” Bannon said. “Here we get a fully picture of refugee life. People living in a small community in a small part of the world, but their experiences are not small. They’re as expansive as the human experience anywhere.”
Born in Buffalo, N.Y., Bannon said he began working in photography after rediscovering his interest in the art form while caring for his sick mother in the early 2000s. After her death in 2005, Bannon began working as a freelance photographer in Africa.
“He’s not just a photographer, he’s a very good journalist,” said Pflanz. “I’ll sit in an interview and have prepared two dozen questions which I will ask over the course of a couple of hours. And at the end of that, it’s Brendan’s turn to take photos and he always sits down and he says ‘actually you know what, give me 10 minutes to have a conversation. I don’t want to start taking pictures.’ My best quotes for my stories always come, invariably come, from those final 10 minutes of conversation with Brendan.”
Melissa Lopez, American Sign Language major, said, “I thought it was amazing. I live in McFarland so I don’t get to see things like that. You see these things in National Geographic. You learn about these things in books, but you don’t get to actually meet someone [like Bannon].”
Bannon also spent part of his time here exploring Bakersfield and surrounding communities. “I come from Buffalo, a town about the size of Bakersfield. They’re both largely working class communities, and I feel at home here,” said Bannon.”
While Bannon enjoyed his stay in Bakersfield, his visit to the United States won’t be for a longperiod of time. “I do intend to go back [to Africa]. I’ll probably be working on a project in February about Najrobe as a city,” said Bannon.