- America is a study in contrasts, from the pomp and circumstance of a presidential inauguration to the reality of hunger across the land.

Today's guest documents life in the United States as only a photojournalist can.

She's Maddie McGarvey, this week on Story in the Public Square.

(exciting music) Hello, and welcome to Story in the Public Square, where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from the Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

- And I'm G. Wayne Miller with the Providence Journal.

- This week, we're joined by an old friend of the show.

Maddie McGarvey is an amazingly talented photojournalist whose work has been seen recently in National Geographic, the New York Times, and always on her Instagram page @MaddieMcGarvey, spelled just like it sounds.

She joins us today from Ohio.

Maddie, thank you so much for being with us.

- Yeah, thank you so much for having me again.

It's always a pleasure.

- I think it's been about a year and a half since you were last on the show, and it was during the pandemic, and you've been busy, to put it mildly, since then.

Let's start back with the inauguration of President Joe Biden, which you covered.

Tell us a little bit about that in the aftermath of the Capital riot, the insurrection, with all of the drama and the pandemic raging.

What was that experience like?

- Yeah, it was pretty interesting because I had been following Joe Biden's journey through the campaign, since he announced that he was running for president.

I was in South Carolina with him when he got the nomination and then to be able to kind of finish it up as he was walking into the White House was a pretty cool thing, but it was obviously a little bit of a strange experience because we were in the middle of a pandemic and DC was so locked down after January 6th.

So you're kind of walking around, and normally during inaugurations, you'd probably see a lot of people and everyone would want to watch and all that.

But for this, it was layers and layers of security and National Guard, so it was just a really bizarre experience, just so much security, so many clearances we had to get, but it was really interesting to see and witness history with Kamala Harris as the first Vice President of color and woman.

It was a really interesting experience.

- Do you ever think though about, I don't know how to put this, the privilege of being literally at the front row of history for a moment like that?

- I mean, honestly all the time.

I have to pinch myself.

I mean, I don't ever want to get used to the feeling of seeing history unfold in front of me.

It's such an incredible gift, and yeah, just to be able to see history under a microscope, it's insane, it's so cool.

I definitely had one of those moments where I was stationed outside of the White House and I had to get up at 5:00 a.m. and stand out in the cold for like 12 hours until he finally did the parade in front of the White House, but the entire time I was just like, I can't believe this.

This is such a cool experience.

So I definitely had those pinch me moments as a photojournalist a lot.

- So Maddie, did you have a chance to actually get inside the capital during your time around the inauguration?

- No, I didn't.

It was so locked down by that point, they just really weren't letting people near it, so I didn't do that, but I kind of had my one little spot that I was stationed, and you know, it's funny 'cause it's so many logistics of getting security clearance and getting in position, and then when it comes down to it, it was maybe five minutes of taking photos.

It was kind of interesting.

- Did you have any concerns for your own safety?

I mean, this is literally two weeks after the insurrection, and I know watching it, I was anxious that something would happen.

I know security was really, really tight.

You've talked about that, but was that going through your mind at all, that there could be personal risk to you and other people there covering and participating?

- It definitely crossed my mind, but I think that after January 6th they took every precaution in the book.

I mean, everything was so, so, so locked down and the security, I can't imagine a place with more security.

So when I actually got there, my anxiety kind of went away and I kind of just tuned into this really historic moment.

- Not long after that, Maddie, you did a shoot for National Geographic and their series on hunger in America.

And you traveled to West Virginia and did some photo reporting there.

Talk to us about that series and about the series that you shot.

- Natural Geographic was doing a large story about hunger in America, and I went down to West Virginia to kind of photograph this concept of hunger.

It's one of those things where it's like, I live in Columbus, Ohio.

I never really have to worry about where my next meal is coming from.

But these people all around us, two hours away in West Virginia, other places in Columbus, are always wondering what their next meal is gonna be.

It was such a privilege to meet these people in West Virginia.

Grocery stores might be like 45 minutes away, but it's on these really windy roads, so even if you have money or cars, it's still hard to get there.

It's interesting to see 'cause it's these children who, a lot of the times the teachers at their schools are sending them home with food.

West Virginians are the best people.

One thing that I thought was really inspiring about this story was just how the community rallies around to help each other, whether it's the guidance counselor taking a trip up and seeing their kids and dropping off fresh fruit or a cold drink.

It was a story I really enjoyed working on because I think it could kind of open up your eyes to what's happening not too far away from you and something that millions of Americans are struggling with every single day.

- How do you find the subjects for a shoot like that?

- A lot of times it's just sort of wandering around a town and starting to talk to people and asking people do you know anyone that's in the situation?

I'm always so pleasantly surprised that people are so open to telling their story.

I get a little anxious being like hey, can I photograph you in this really intimate setting?

But you know, nine times out of 10, people are so willing to just share their stories and they're glad that someone's listening.

So yeah, it was a lot, and I was able to spend about two weeks there and just really get to know these families and they let me into their lives and homes.

I told them stories about my life and then they kind of trusted me and were able to share their lives.

So it was a really amazing experience.

It was interesting to hear their frustrations, because sometimes people in Appalachia and West Virginia feel like they're kind of looked over.

It's almost like people expect there to be poverty there so they don't take it as seriously, and so that's a frustration.

Being able to get there and show the story, I visited this food bank and they do this every single week.

It doesn't open until 11:00 a.m. and cars were starting to line up at 2:45 a.m. for food.

- [Jim] Wow.

- I mean, and it was miles and miles of cars, and they do this every single week, and in the middle of the pandemic, I think some of the bigger cities were getting attention for that, you know, like long food lines and everything.

The guy Bill who runs the food bank is like, this is every week in West Virginia, you know?

I like to highlight these communities around me that I just really, deeply care about and understand, and I just feel really honored that they let me tell their story, and hopefully it opens up the eyes to people in the country, 'cause I think sometimes you just don't know until someone kind of shines a light on it.

- You obviously have a real talent for that personal connection, which I would argue is an integral part of your great photojournalism.

Do you stay in touch with the people you photograph?

Do they stay in touch with you?

How does that work?

- Yeah, I really try to keep these relationships going.

It's funny.

I don't really use Facebook too much anymore, but Facebook is such a great way to keep in touch with people that I photograph over the years.

They'll send me some messages with updates.

I'll message them back, tell them what's up in my life.

I just feel so thankful that I have all these really special relationships all over the country from all these interesting stories I worked on.

I love always sending them pictures, too.

That's the least I can do if they trust me, just be like here's these nice photos of you that maybe you wouldn't have had otherwise.

So yeah, I love keeping up with relationships with people.

- So another story that you illustrated was last year for the New York Times magazine, and it was titled When No Landlord Will Rent to You, Where Do You Go?

How extended stay hotels and motels became the last housing option for thousands of low income Americans.

Obviously another very important topic.

Talk to us about that.

- I went to Las Vegas, and in Columbus, Ohio, there was a woman in Las Vegas and a family in Ohio.

It's one of those things where a lot of bad luck and just circumstances of life compounds.

So these two women, they got evicted, their credit kind of tanked, so no landlord would rent to them.

So the only option is to live in these motels, these long term stay motels.

But the problem is the monthly payment for that is often double what a studio that you can rent would cost.

So they're paying just so much money, like 13, $1,400 a month for a 300 square foot motel.

And it's just digging a deeper and deeper and deeper hole.

The housing lottery, there's a five year wait for it for assistance, and there's often families of seven, eight kids living in these tiny little hotel rooms.

It's one of those things too where I never really thought about it when I was passing these motels on the highway.

And now every time I pass these extended stay motels, I think about these families that are living there and it's their entire home in there, all their belongings, and how they're still struggling because it's just so expensive for what they're getting, but they have no other options.

- That must have an impact on you emotionally, seeing that, witnessing that and becoming deeply involved in photographing that.

Talk about that.

- It breaks my heart, and I get to kind of see really up close how a lot of policy and these norms of society affect people.

It's really unfortunate because they just get deeper and deeper in a hole that's just so hard to get out of and there's so few options.

I'm constantly thinking about these people and I try to do my best to keep in touch and share resources and all that.

But I hope that sharing their stories, someone can kind of see it and maybe eventually a policy would change or they can get the help they need.

But it's tough.

It's really hard not to get attached emotionally to everyone I photograph.

- Well, Maddie, another emotional, tough story that you did for the Hechinger Report focused on a veteran and their family who was not getting the kind of help that they were promised from Washington.

Can you break down that assignment for us?

- During the pandemic, obviously a lot of schools went completely virtual, and I think that this story was just a clear example of how the pandemic doesn't treat everyone equally.

So this family, it was a veteran and her husband, and they had a severely daughter and two other daughters, and they're doing everything they can to support them, but they can't really, they were having trouble getting a job, and then at the same time, they have to have people to watch the kids.

And then on top of that the cost of high speed internet for these kids to do virtual school meant that the parents would just not eat dinner a few days a week because they couldn't afford both food and high speed internet.

There was drive by shootings in the neighborhood, so the kids were traumatized and had PTSD from that.

The mom's just like, I just feel helpless.

I have a degree, I'm a veteran, I'm asking for help, I'm looking for help and I just can't get it.

I just think it's one of those things where we all struggled during COVID, but some people really, it such impacted their lives and their incomes and they got just so far behind.

So that was a tough one to work on, for sure.

It was nice 'cause people rallied around them and ended up raising I think $40,000 for the family, which was sort of a silver lining of it.

There's countless families like this.

It was just one example, and it's kind of sad to see.

- So where does your long interest and your deep interest in exploring social injustices and disparities come from?

I mean, you're a photojournalist.

You can choose any subjects you want, but we've just talked about some of the things that are dear to your heart and were so important.

Where does this come from?

Why are you attracted to doing these incredibly important stories?

- I've always just been a pretty curious person, I guess.

I just really love discovering more about my community.

I really strongly believe in the idea of covering your own backyard and showing your community what's happening in their own backyards.

I also get to photograph presidents, but I also see people at their lowest moments too, and I guess seeing how policy in Washington directly affects just the normal American, it's interesting to me, and I think that the goal at least is that people will see these photos and see what's happening in their own backyards and hopefully be a little bit more aware of it because I think sometimes people just have blinders on and it's hard to see outside of their own lives.

Every time I work on these stories, I'm just astounded and touched and heartbroken and all the different emotions about what's happening all around me.

So yeah, I think it's just this deep curiosity and just in hope that getting their story out can create some kind of positive change.

- Do you ever get frustrated though, that you put on cable news on a regular basis and that drives so much of the conversation about policy and about what's happening in this country, and by and large, the primetime hours on any of the three major cable networks, there's not the kind of coverage of the kinds of issues that you're talking about here.

It's more some sort of weird mix of the celebrity of power, rather than as a deep dive into the lived experience of Americans all over the country.

Do you get frustrated that you're doing this incredible reporting, but so much of the press is sort of oblivious to this?

- Yeah.

I just think that seeing pictures and photos and reading stories about the actual American day to day experience and people actually being affected rather than a pundit talking head on a TV show just goes further.

People really can connect when they can look at a photo and be like, that could be my mom or my cousin or my brother.

- [Jim] Or me.

- Or me, yeah.

One or two other decisions in life or one or two other, anything, that could have been me.

So I think humanizing these stories is so important in connecting people to it.

I think it's the case.

I read all the time about factories closing, for example.

One of the stories I worked on a couple years ago was at GM.

He'd worked at GM his entire life.

It was such a part of his identity and what it meant for his family that this factory's closing and he's losing his job because you hear that headline all the time.

You might hear that on the news, but when you're looking at him and his family and he has a severely disabled daughter and it's just hard to move your entire life and just how he felt as his identity of always being a GM worker and his dad was a GM worker and his grandfather was GM worker.

- So Maddie, when we were talking last week before you came on the show about what we wanted to get into, we talked about mental health.

As you know, I've covered mental health.

That's been my journalistic passion for decades.

We've had guests on this show repeatedly talking about mental health, and of course during the pandemic, many of the issues have been exacerbated by COVID.

So when I saw an Instagram post from you, it was early this year, I think January 2nd, it really caught my eye.

I'm just gonna read the beginning of it, and then you can talk about what led you to post this and the issues behind it.

It began, 2021 had its fair share of ups and downs, but I can say with complete certainty that it was the first year I really put myself first.

I found a therapist that I see weekly that helps me process life and grief and anxiety and everything in between.

I started medication that helps me feel like a complete person and realize there's no shame in that.

I prioritize friends and family because 2020 taught me that you cannot take that time for granted.

Very powerful words.

I mean, you're a great writer in addition to a photographer.

But get into that for us, will you?

- First and foremost, I think that there is still stigma around mental health, and it really in my opinion should be treated like anything else.

It should be treated like if you're medicated for high blood pressure.

It should be the same for medicating depression or anxiety.

I think that in some ways during COVID, it just helped me put things in perspective of what was important and it helped me slow down a little bit.

I think before I was sort of working at an unsustainable pace.

I felt like I was on my way to burning out a little bit, and then slowing down, and then I lost my father in the beginning of 2020.

And then I was just really kind of thinking of what is important to me in life.

No day is promised.

I learned that with the loss of my father, I learned that with the loss of all these people with COVID and I'm like no day is promised, so what do I want to do with my one life I have?

And so I really started to prioritize my mental health and kind of realizing that as much as I love this job so much, there is a little bit of vicarious trauma I feel like I have been caring with me.

I've given artists talks before and talked about a lot of these things I've covered.

Often the one question I've gotten at the end is like, are you okay?

Like, what do you do for yourself?

And for the longest time I was like, I really don't do anything.

And then I kind of realized I need to do something about this.

And so in 2020 I started seeing a therapist and I went on some medication and it just changed my life completely.

Therapy is such a privilege, too.

I wish that it was so much more accessible in America because I think everyone should have a therapist if they can.

I mean, just having this outside perspective on your life and shaping it is so, so huge.

- That's all very powerful.

You got a tremendous reaction on Instagram.

What have you heard from people not just on Instagram, but just people in your world, your life, colleagues, friends, family, what was their reaction to you sharing this?

- I think it was just positive.

I got a lot of people messaging me and just saying thank you for speaking about this, because it's something that I've been struggling with every day.

I feel like especially on social media, everyone's sort of putting just their best foot forward at all times and it kind of creates this false narrative of what reality is like when you only see people's highlight reels.

I think just being able to show, and life's not perfect and that's okay.

I got a lot of response just like, thank you for talking about this and how did you find a therapist, what kind of like medication are you on, what steps have you taken?

And just being able to have those conversations freely, it just feels really good and it feels really productive and healthy.

We've all been through a lot of trauma in the last couple years, and it's totally okay to realize that and talk about it and move forward in a healthy way.

There's so many resources out there, so yeah, I think it was a really positive response and I'm so glad that I was able to talk about that after kind of holding those feelings in for a long time.

- Well, it's a powerful public service you're doing with that, and frankly, talking about it here too.

Let's switch topics for just a moment though.

You were among those covering President Trump's first rally after the insurrection of January 6th.

It happened to occur in Ohio.

What was that experience like?

Media is not generally well received.

In fact, other journalists have become props for some of those rallies.

What was your experience like?

- I've photographed a lot of Trump rallies over the years.

This one was not too different, honestly.

There was a lot of people, they were all really excited.

It's always, you know, there's the kind of the tradition of Trump kind of booing the media and fake news and all that.

But it's kind of funny 'cause when I just go up to people and talk to them human to human, they're always pretty nice to me.

I think that's kind of the thing.

In mass media, you just kind of get this idea, this collective behavior idea of what one group is like or what another group is like, but one person, one individual to another individual, just realizing we're all humans.

I don't know.

It's an interesting experience, 'cause yeah, one on one, I didn't really have a problem, but then when the whole boo the media, fake news, you know, that was a whole collective behavior, but it was interesting.

He had a huge crowd, people were really excited to see him.

He knows how to ramp up a crowd.

So it was interesting to kind of get back into politics again, 'cause I thought I might have a year off or something, but it's always interesting to see.

- So switching gears again, tell us about the Kathy Sullivan shoot for Rolling Stone, another great publication where your work has appeared.

- Kathy is an amazing woman.

She's the first woman to have gone to outer space and the deepest part of the ocean.

I was just so excited to meet her, just think she's like so cool, and what a trailblazer for women.

We kind of just walked around Columbus.

She started a science museum here several years ago and she just was so full of energy and I was just so curious.

I was like, what was scarier?

Was it outer space or the deepest part of the ocean?

And she was like, neither.

She was just so stoic, 'cause both of those things terrify me.

So yeah, just kind of meeting this woman who's had these incredible experiences, again, it's just a pinch me moment.

I get to meet the most amazing people.

So that was a really cool one.

- Maddie, we've got literally about 30 seconds left here.

I was looking through something else the other night, some historic photographs from the Second World War, actually.

I thought about those journalists who snapped those pictures.

Some of them were on the home front, some of them were on a battlefield, but they snapped those pictures sort of in that moment.

Do you ever stop and think about the long term impacts of some of the photos you might take, what might be seen 100 years from now?

Does that ever cross your mind when you're working on one of these shoots?

- I mean, yeah, sometimes.

I think it's so important to have a record of history.

I love looking at photos from even 10 years ago and 100 years ago.

It's so important to know what we've been through and where we're going and how history changes, but also sort of repeats itself.

My hope is that me kind of covering my backyard and creating this little record of history people will be able to see and know what happened here in the Midwest.

I think it's just such a cool thing.

Again, I know I keep saying this, but I just feel so honored to be able to tell these stories and just have this perspective of the world around me.

It's the best job in the world.

- Well, Maddie McGarvey on Instagram.

It's M-A-D-D-I-E-M-C-G-A-R-V-E-Y.

Thank you so much for being with us today.

- [Maddie] Thank you so much.

Always such a pleasure.

- That's all the time we have this week, but if you want to know more about Story in the Public Square, you can find us on Facebook and Twitter or visit pellcenter.org, where you can always catch up on previous episodes.

For G. Wayne Miller, I'm Jim Ludes, asking you to join us again next time for more Story in the Public Square.

(exciting music)