In Fame & Finances photographers Laura Elizabeth Pohl and Fati Abubakar talk about how Fati handles money and how she dealt with online fame after her photography went viral.

This episode originally ran on Creative + Moneywise in January 2021.

Laura Elizabeth Pohl is an American photographer, filmmaker, and Certified Financial Education Instructor living in South Africa. Over the years, she’s collaborated with international NGOs including Catholic Relief Services, Jhpiego, and the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation to tell visual stories about their work. She founded Creative + Moneywise as a resource to help photographers understand financial issues and make money decisions that better reflect their values and the life they want to live. Before switching to photography, Laura worked as a business reporter covering stocks, bonds, and foreign exchange in Seoul and New York. 

Fati Abubakar is a documentary photographer, photojournalist, and public health worker in Nigeria. She specializes in documenting cities and towns, highlighting both the positives and negatives of each location. She focuses on health perspectives, using photography as a medium to highlight problems at the community level. Fati has a special interest in creating counter-narratives for underrepresented communities. Her current work is a personal project which documents her hometown of Borno State at the time of Boko Haram. The project entitled “Bits of Borno” has gained critical acclaim and has been published in media outlets including the New York Times, BBC, Reuters, CNN, Voice of America, Newsweek Europe, and others. She has been commissioned to work with UNICEF, international Alert, Action Aid, and other organizations.