For The Verge / Vox Media, I photographed the Recovering Warrior Employment Conference in Boston last month. The event was a hiring event featuring 20 or so employers and put on by the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation's Hiring Our Heroes initiative. And while the employers included organizations such as Bank of America, GE, the Boston Fire Department, and others, my focus was on Uber, a company that's been in quite a bit of controversy lately and which is currently aiming to hire 50,000 US military veterans as part of the UberMILITARY initiative.
The event was open to the press, and while most companies had no issue talking with me or the writer of the piece, the representatives from Uber would not give me their names or share any of the brochures or pamphlets they were giving out. I typically gather information while taking pictures so I can include relevant context in the captions I submit to publications. I hate photographing people that actively don't want to be included in coverage; the Uber reps were very friendly to me, but would not provide any information after repeated inquiries by me and the writer. So, while I photographed the event, I also photographed their table and some of the veterans who listened to the Uber pitch and we gleaned whatever information we could about how the company is presenting itself to military veterans.
You can read the article by Avi Asher-Shapiro that features a few of my photos or see more of the photos in my online archive.
