When the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade sent protesters spilling into the streets on June 24, 2022, Danny Arensberg grabbed his camera and followed the crowds.
Back then, he was considering career paths in portraiture and fashion while studying photography at New York University. As the protests surged on through the summer, Arensberg got to know the regular pool of photographers, who helped nudge him toward photojournalism.
He comes to Pittsburgh’s Public Source by way of Athens, Ohio, where he’s studying for his masters in photojournalism.
“It was a great first moment coming into Pittsburgh via the Fort Pitt Bridge,” he said. “It’s a beautiful way to see Pittsburgh for the first time.”
While that first glimpse lit up his photographer’s eye, it also retraced the path of his grandparents, both of whom had studied at Pitt after meeting in New York. From his studio apartment in the South Side, Arensberg finds in Pittsburgh elements of his hometown and his interim home in Ohio.
“It’s sort of a time portal,” he said.
‘There was nobody around to tell their story’
Octavia Liku also came to Pittsburgh via New York. And while she doesn’t have roots in this city, her parents’ influence hung over her first story at Carnegie Mellon University’s student newspaper.
Signing up for the Tartan to hone her writing skills, Liku learned of desperate morale among custodian staff whose lapsed contracts created turnover, shortages and allegations of mistreatment. She threw herself into the story, and related their experiences to memories of shadowing her dad around job sites as a plumber. Often, they’d enter a wealthy home to unblock a toilet — and be told to take off their shoes at the door.
Liku interviewed the campus custodial workers anonymously because they told her they feared employer retribution.
“That story was important because there was nobody around to tell their story,” she said.
Words and images as public service
A year after Dobbs, the Oct. 7 attack and Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza set off another wave of protests. Grappling with how to cover these also proved formative to Arensberg, as he leaned on the Associated Press style book for guidance.
“I wanted to make sure my captioning and understanding of such a contentious conflict was accurate,” he said.
Arensberg said the polarization he witnessed convinced him of the importance of staying impartial as a reporter.
Arensberg’s strongest guiding principle, though, is pursuing journalism as a “public service.”
“I want to inform the public through photos,” he said. “There’s a power in that.”
Liku is similarly motivated when it comes to applying journalism as a force for good.
She believes journalism involves “objective processes,” though that shouldn’t necessarily yield objective outcomes.
“I don’t think journalism is about being an activist,” she said. “But I don’t think you can take a passive role in your community and attribute that to impartiality. I think you have to have a stake.”
She’s also concerned by how journalism has veered from its working class roots.
Though Liku’s immigrant parents urged her to study STEM, she opted for a less trodden path.
“I want to be an artist and journalist, and they seem to be increasingly difficult things to do these days.” She bets on Pittsburgh as the place to do that.
Octavia Liku
- Age: 19
- Education/major: BFA in art, BS in ethics, history, and public policy from Carnegie Mellon University
- Dream job: Investigative journalist, painter
Danny Arensberg
- Age: 23
- Education/major: BFA in photography from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, masters degree in photojournalism from Ohio University’s School of Visual Communications (in progress, graduating ~May 2028)
- Dream job: Staff photographer at Associated Press
Jamie Wiggan is deputy editor for Pittsburgh Public Source. He can be reached jamie@publicsource.org.
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