Sarabeth Maney on Saturday: "I hope it inspired people." (Photo: Twitter)Sarahbeth Maney, a sudden star of Washington photojournalism, plans to relocate to Detroit in June after a year-long New York Times fellowship.
Maney, 26, made a major splash this week with a viral photo from Day 1 of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's confirmation hearing for the Supreme Court. She snapped Leila Jackson, 17, glancing at her mother with emotions every parent hopes to earn. A Detroit Free Press arts and culture reporter voices a future's colleague's pride as he shares Maney's tweet of the image:
The young woman who snapped this powerful photo is coming this summer to work full time for the Detroit Free Press. #detroit #michigan https://t.co/Pq5K2piFF7
— Duante Beddingfield (@DBFreePress) March 24, 2022
The portrait of pride drawns national attention, as does the 2019 college graduate who captured it. The New York Times interviewed its staffer about the shot it calls "one of the event’s most widely shared images." The native of Oakland, Calif., also spoke with her home area NPR station, KQED, and did Saturday interviews with WDIV of Detroit and MSNBC, among others.
On Friday, an essay she wrote about this whirlwind week was posted by NBC's "Today" show. An excerpt:
Seeing it spread so widely and shared by famous public figures, such as Martin Luther King’s daughter Bernice King, Meena Harris and other public figures, feels like the highest honor. It's been incredible to experience such positive reactions and I hope it inspired people to be proud of who they are. ...
I want my visibility to show that Black women are fully capable of being photojournalists and achieving highs in their own careers, despite how much we have to fight for representation and respect. ... There are not enough Black women in photojournalism and I hope to forge a path for more to join our industry.
"What a powerful, needed photo," Bernice King tweeted Thursday.
Maney's path after earning a San Francisco State University photojournalism degree three years ago includes five months as a Flint Journal intern in 2020, followed by three months at the San Francisco Chronicle. She has freelanced for The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Vasnity Fair, CNN, The Guardian, HuffPost, Bloomberg and Forbes.
"This was the third time that I applied to the New York Times Fellowship," she tells KQED in a conversation posted today. She's the paper's first Black photography fellow.
Now she savors a "very proud yet overwhelming moment," she tells The Times.
I've worked so hard to get to where I am and to be recognized by so many people -- it's just an incredible feeling.
On Friday, the upcoming Freep photojournalist -- who sometimes uses "SB" in place of her nine-letter first name -- was saluted on Instagram by a New York-based network called Black Women Photographers. "Look at what Black women can do when given an opportunity," it posts.
