In the past several weeks, pro-Palestine demonstrators have occupied buildings and set up encampments on college campuses across the country.
“In Photos: A nation shaken by camps for Gaza,” published by the Daily Trojan, documents the student movement in a first-of-its-kind collaboration among student photojournalists at universities from coast to coast.
Henry Kofman/Daily Trojan
Daily Trojan photo editor Jordan Renville and deputy photo editor Henry Kofman spoke with KNX News about how the project came together.
“No outside media was allowed on campus, at least for USC, and that really made our jobs as photojournalists and student photojournalists very important,” Renville said. “We knew that the photos coming out of the encampment, or the ones that we were taking, were the only ones that were going to be published on a national level.”
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Kofman said he stayed in the newsroom all night on April 23, having heard that student activists would be setting up the protest encampment at the adjacent Alumni Park the next morning.
“I got one hour of sleep on the couch and I got out there at 4 a.m. which is when they were going to begin setting up their tents,” he said.
Henry Kofman/Daily Trojan
Except for an hour when he had to go to class, Kofman spent all day in the newsroom, editing photos Renville brought back from the encampment. Renville described the mood that day as “surreal and a little bit dystopian,”
“People were just overall at like a heightened tension,” he said. “As a photojournalist, I knew that I had to capture both sides of the aisle in terms of this issue, you know, the police’s expressions, as well as the protesters’ expressions, were very important. And those pictures ended up telling the story to the people who weren't there.”
Jordan Renville/Daily Trojan
The Daily Trojan’s photo essay includes images from protests at USC, UCLA, UC Berkeley, Emory University, the University of Texas, NYU, and Emerson College.
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