Backpack Journalism at Creighton University is a collaboration between the Theology Department and the Journalism, Media, & Computing Department. It came about because of a theologian interested in social justice and filmmaking and a journalist and an artist interested in filmmaking and social justice.
Every other summer, a small group of students travels to a community in search of a story. Led by professors Dr. John O’Keefe, Tim Guthrie, and Carol Zuegner, the students immerse themselves in the communities, interviewing, filming, recording, and writing. When they return to Creighton, they take the stories they have collected and develop them into a short documentary film. The Backpack Journalism documentaries have been accepted at several film festivals across the United States. The class has traveled to such far-flung places as the Dominican Republic and Uganda, Bethel Alaska and Nogales Arizona/Sonora.
The next project is scheduled for the summer of 2020 and will focus on deforestation in Eastern Africa.
While in Arizona we were able to do some sightseeing mostly of cacti, mountains, and old Spanish missions. Here are a couple of my favorite photos from our more touristy experiences…
This is Saguaro National park. It is filled with cacti and mountains. This is what the desert looks like. Below is not what the desert looks like, at least in the American Southwest…I did not take this photo as I have never been to the African desert.Continuing on what the desert actually looks like, it is filled with plants like this. When going on our off trail desert hike it was a constant struggle to avoid these prickly bushes.One of the coolest things we saw at Saguaro National park was when a rainbow circled the sun.This was taken at a Jesuit mission in Arizona. It was ornately decorated and was a nice reminder of the American southwest’s past that felt, and is, much older than America itself.This shrine was inside a mountain, or what some non-Midwesterners would describe as a large rocky hill, at a Jesuit mission. This was a nice representation of the religious undertones of our entire experience on the border.More Jesuit stuff at missions…A flower in one of the park’s gardens. It was nice to see some color in a terrain full of neutrals.On our last day before heading back to Omaha we went to Patagonia lake where the water was so clear that the mountains and trees clearly were reflected in the water. Which, again, is amazing to me as someone who’s clearest body of water back home is a manmade murky pond no one really ever swims in.Though this was taken on a work adventure to Sassabe it was somewhat of a tourist event as we sat and just watched the mountains and the grass for a couple of hours.Since I have the attention span of a squirrel, watching the mountains for two hours ended in me playing with the settings on my camera and getting this photograph.
Our time in Arizona felt like a big adventure and I only have these few photos to prove it.
Liz these photos are gorgeous!
I love these photos and the captions.
Great photos Liz. I can finally see the rainbow without going blind. Thanks!