Guidance for Teaching Visual Stories

by Tara Pixley, Ph.D., assistant professor of journalism, Temple University

A core mission of photojournalism is to inspire deeper empathy between audiences and the lived experiences of those photographed. Solutions journalism seeks to report on and amplify the work of people striving to address social, environmental and political ills. These two missions are natural partners, but realizing their combined potential requires us first to  understand how image-making can either humanize or dehumanize the communities it depicts.

Why visuals matter in solutions storytelling
Visual coverage is not merely illustrative; images can and often do function as evidence in the minds of viewers. Cognitive psychology shows that our brains typically prioritize visual information, making photographs a uniquely persuasive form of evidence. But that same research cautions that images can reinforce false impressions as effectively as true ones, which is precisely why the choices photojournalists make carry such ethical weight. A photograph of a community response to a problem is proof that the response exists, that real people are enacting it, and that change is possible. Other ideas our visuals might implicitly suggest about those communities are also powerful and must therefore be considered with care.

Research consistently shows that audiences for news stories notice photographs first, remember them longest, and are significantly more likely to engage with stories that include compelling images. At the same time, nearly half of news consumers report avoiding news because of its negativity. Solutions-focused visual storytelling addresses both realities: It pairs the evidential power of the photograph with a framework that motivates rather than overwhelms audiences. 
Tip: Point students toward this research showing that the majority of global audiences now get their news through visual platforms. This helps underscore the importance of visual thinking in all journalistic production. 

• Digital News Report 2026 | Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism
• Social Media and News Fact Sheet | Pew Research Center

Beyond default visual conventions
Too often, photojournalism defaults to images of tragedy, chaos or blank-faced people of color as the de facto representation of human rights issues. These conventions fail aesthetically and journalistically. Expressionless portraits of people in “far-flung places” do not communicate what is being done to address a problem, and graphic images of violence rarely generate lasting, change-making empathy. Neither approach reflects the complexity of the communities being documented.

By contrast, a solutions-focused visual story seeks to explain the underlying problem, portray existing responses to it, and provide a framework that may inspire further action or solution replication. Human agency is at the core of solutions journalism work, and the visuals must reflect that. This requires visual journalists to move beyond victimization narratives and instead represent people as full human beings embedded in social ecosystems.
Tip: Encourage students to describe what this series of images communicates about agency, context and evidence of a solution’s efficacy and response. Identify particular photos that might resonate more than others and suggest why: 

• Readjusting Traditional Plant Knowledge
• Feeding Cows Seaweed Could Cut Methane Emissions and Diversify Maine’s Coastal Economy, but Can It Scale?

Three principles for the classroom:

Acknowledge biases and privileges. Before students pick up a camera, they should examine the preconceived ideas they bring to a story: about race, class, gender, religion, disability, citizenship and sexuality, among others. The power of photography lies in its ability to frame stories symbolically. The visual shorthands we choose can either expand audiences’ understanding of communities or reproduce inaccurate narratives. Encourage students to interrogate their own positionality in relation to the communities they wish to document, and to be genuinely open to feedback from those communities.

Understand the structural and historical roots of the problem. Every solutions story must first grasp the problem itself. Students should research not just what a response looks like, but how a community arrived at the conditions requiring a response. Journalism rarely answers the question “How did we get here?” but solutions journalism should. This context produces both more accurate reporting and more meaningful images.

Engage people as collaborators, not subjects. The language of “capturing” images reinforces a transactional relationship with those being photographed. Students should understand that they always have a relationship with the people they photograph. Thorough, accurate captions that put names and lived experiences to faces, explain relationships and clarify why things are happening are as essential as the images themselves. Evidence of whether a solution is working should draw on both data and the testimony of those whose lives are affected.

One common structure:

1. Establishing image:  Shows a key character within the environment that is the focus of the story. It also puts humans in relationship to nature, which is a core element of successful climate visual storytelling. 
2. Reportage of everyday life: Shows how people survive and thrive together and helps audiences recognize what people are fighting to save or build with their solutions work. 
3. Detail images: Help us zoom in on interesting moments, elements of the social or natural landscape or a process highlighted in the story. They also help keep the pacing engaging and provide visual variety across a photo essay or video. 
4. Portraits: Give us a clearer sense of the characters in the story and the lives impacted by the problems and/or solutions. 
5. Quiet moments/closers: Images that provide a breather, a pause that helps the information in a series settle in the viewer’s mind.

Tip: You can review and annotate the elements above in this story: The Fishing Women of Sinaloa | World Press Photo

How to teach this: Reframe the story with an in-class exercise:

• Bring in three to five photographs depicting a social problem that uses conventional, problem-focused framing, i.e., images that show suffering, devastation or passivity.
• Divide students into small groups and ask each group to answer:
  • Who is missing from this image? 
  • What moment, place or person would need to be photographed to show a community response to this problem? 
  • What visual evidence would tell us whether that response is working?
• Groups can then sketch or describe (in words or rough thumbnail drawings) an alternative image or sequence of images that centers agency and response. 
• The goal is not to dismiss the original photographs but to practice expanding the visual narrative beyond default conventions. Debrief as a class on what changed and why it matters.

Tip:

• When students are developing solutions story pitches, push their visual thinking early by asking them to consider what the response can look like visually. 
• Students often default to thinking about who they will interview before they consider what they will photograph/film, but ideally these things can be considered in tandem. 
• Asking students to imagine and describe, in concrete visual terms, the moment or scene that would show the response in action, not just the people affected, can help them identify whether they have genuine visual access to the story and prompts more intentional, solutions-oriented image-planning from the start.