Annie Griffiths was a pioneer for female photographers when she took on a role at National Geographic.

Now, as the executive director of Ripple Effect Images, Griffiths is a pioneer for other women around the world. She documents the struggles of women and girls in developing countries and highlights organizations attempting to help them.

On Tuesday night, Griffiths spoke to a crowd of Syracuse University students, faculty and community members about her experiences. Griffiths spoke at Hendricks Chapel and was the final speaker in this semester’s University Lecture series.

She used a slideshow of some of her photos to tell her life story, including events like discovering her love for photography in college, honing her skills at a small local newspaper, traveling the world with National Geographic and starting Ripple Effect Images.

Griffiths shared anecdotes about her travels and talked about what she’d learned in her career.

“It’s a great world out there. The more you travel, the less you fear,” Griffiths said. “Most places are safer than the average American city.”

She said that one of the things she loves about photography is being able to tell peoples’ stories and overcoming stereotypes. She said that through her work she has fallen in love with Arab women because their stories are “seldom told.” Griffiths said that just because it is a gender-separate poor culture, it doesn’t mean that the women she has met are unhappy.

Griffiths has two children that she brought with her on many of her travels for National Geographic. She said that her daughter had been to 13 countries before she was even born. Their trip to the Middle East was one of the best experiences for her family because the culture there encourages adults to look after children, Griffiths said.

She said that because “everything’s been photographed” it is a photographer’s challenge to see things in a new way and “keep the creative juices flowing.”

She added that the way she gets the best photographs is when she is able to make her subjects feel comfortable around her and then blend in to her surroundings. She likened good photographers to chameleons.

“The goal is to connect and then disappear,” Griffiths said.

In the question-and-answer session of the lecture, one student asked what Griffiths’ advice was for people who wanted to follow a similar career path. Griffiths urged young photographers to learn from each other and challenge themselves.

“Compete with yourself,” Griffiths said.

After her speech, Griffiths signed books for audience members.

“I thought it was great. I thought she was very articulate, she did a great job explaining how she went through her process and she was so interesting in what her perspective on things were and her images were great,” said Katie Zilcosky, a freshman broadcast and digital journalism major.

Cristina Baussan, a senior photojournalism major, also enjoyed the speech.

“She’s obviously an amazing photographer,” Baussan said. “I learned a lot from her work and it was just good seeing how every picture had a story behind it so it was just very inspiring.”

Correction: In a previous version of this article, Annie Griffiths’ title was misidentified in the headline and the photo caption. Griffiths is a current photographer for National Geographic. The Daily Orange regrets this error.

Published on March 24, 2015 at 11:33 pm

Contact: clmoran@syr.edu