Enter/Exit 

Trauma-Informed Praxis for Visual Journalism and Beyond



What if journalists centered survivors as the experts on care-driven visual storytelling?

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Buy   E-Book (Spanish)  E-Book (English)



Through interviewing over 40 individuals who had been photographed or interviewed by a journalist after a traumatic event or hardship, Enter/Exit imagines models of working co-created by people with lived experience on both sides of the lens.

Enter/Exit is a resource rooted in questions that often go unasked; a space to put in conversation perspectives typically kept apart. It originated from questioning our own work in visual journalism: When is it helping, when is it harming? What does collaboration mean in the act of image-making itself? What is it like for someone when the most difficult moments of their life are shared on the front pages of print publications, websites, and television news? What are we missing? How might shared decision-making shift the ethics and aesthetics of visual storytelling? And what is lost when the pursuit of the final product eclipses care for the process?

Available in print and as a free, open-source digital toolkit, Enter/Exit is a resource and education initiative offering frameworks, dialogues, workshops and creative activations, with the long-term goal of supporting a more compassionate and collaborative media landscape.

Rather than prescribing a one-size-fits-all set of rules, Enter/Exit invites journalists, media makers, educators and practitioners into an ongoing process of unlearning, listening, and restructuring their practices. It recognizes that trauma-informed storytelling is not a checklist, but a relationship—one that demands accountability, flexibility, and care for everyone involved.

Written by
Jennifer Jacklin Stratton
Sarah Blesener
L.J. Granered

Photography by
Jennifer Jacklin Stratton
Sarah Blesener

Graphic design by
Serena Gramaglia

Copy editing by
Holly Patton

Published in partnership with
Little Oak Press
The Reynolds Journalism Institute

 




DISTRIBUTION:

Enter/Exit has been distributed at the following institutions & organizations:
↘   University of Missouri Reynolds
↘   Journalism Institute 
↘   The International Center of Photography
↘   USC Annenberg
↘   Columbia Journalism School
↘   Syracuse University
↘   Ohio University
↘   University of Missouri
ARTICLES & ACTIVATIONS: 
Past Events
⏾   Community Launch at Plena Productions
☽   “Through the Light of Hope”. A Symposium on Photography’s Role in Healing Trauma. International Center of Photography
⏾   Click Photography Festival 2025 
Articles ✶    Photo Spa Interview
✶    Listening, loss, and what we might miss (and learn) from each other
✶    Before entering a space
✶    Anonymous Portraiture: the absence in presence
✶    Aftercare (is not an aftertought) 
✶    Participatory ways of working: Part I & Part II