Contributors

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Virginia Allyn spent most of her life in the San Francisco Bay Area where she started in the mid 1990’s telling stories with her camera. She worked in San Francisco’s Tenderloin and later moved to New York City where she continues doing street photography, looking for stories she wishes to tell.

 

Barbara Ayotte is the editor of ZEKE magazine and the Communications Director of the Social Documentary Network. She has served as a senior strategic communications strategist, writer and activist for leading global health, human rights and media nonprofit organizations, including the Nobel Peace Prize- winning Physicians for Human Rights and International Campaign to Ban Landmines.

 

David Bacon has been photographing the social movements of workers and migrants for three decades. His most recent book, about the U.S./Mexico border, is More Than a Wall/Mas que un muro.

 

Michelle Bogre currently holds the title of Professor Emerita from Parsons School of Design in New York after a 25-year career teaching almost every type of photography class. She is also a copyright lawyer, documentary photographer and author of four books, with work published in various other books. She is currently trying to finish a long-term documentary project on family farms – @thefarmstories on Instagram – among other projects.

 

Brian Branch-Price began his career as a freelancer for The Washington Post, then staffing with The News Journal in Wilmington, DE and The Associated Press in Trenton, NJ. He focuses on portraiture, reportage, and fine art photography. Brian has worked with Ebony magazine, GM, and others, and had several art exhibits at the Plainfield Public Library on his legendary Black gospel artists and veterans, including over 20,000 visitors. He holds degrees in Environmental Geology and Fine Arts from Howard University.

 

Steve Cagan has been practicing activist photography since the mid-1970s. He is most concerned with exploring strength and dignity in everyday struggles of grassroots people resisting their pressures and problems. Major projects include “Working Ohio,” an extended portrait of working people; as well as Indochina; Nicaragua; El Salvador; and Cuba. His current major project is “El Chocó, Colombia: Struggle for Cultural and Environmental Survival.” He has exhibited and published on four continents, has won numerous awards, and co-authored two books.

 

Proudly from New York City, where he grew up in the 1970s, Eric Chang currently lives in Washington, DC. His interest in photography started as a student at The High School of Art and Design and exploded years later on a trip to Nepal. Planning on taking photos of Mount Everest, he discovered he enjoyed photographing the Nepalese people and their culture more. His photography is motivated by curiosity about the world we live in and having compassion for others.

 

Esha Chiocchio is a photographer and filmmaker using her combined knowledge of visual storytelling and sustainable communities to inspire social change. An optimistic realist, she focuses on solutions to social and environmental challenges. Her current project, “Good Earth,” highlights agrarians from diverse sectors who are revitalizing land and drawing carbon into the soil through regenerative practices. She has photographed around the world for publications, non-profits, and commercial clients, including National Geographic, High Country News, Jardins du Monde, and Bonefish Grill.

 

Daniela Cohen is a freelance journalist and non-fiction writer of South African origin currently based in Vancouver, Canada. Her work has been published in New Canadian Media, Canadian Immigrant, The Source Newspaper, and is upcoming in Living Hyphen. Daniela’s work focuses on themes of displacement and belonging, justice, equity, diversity and inclusion. She is also the co-founder of Identity Pages, a youth writing mentorship program.

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Robin Fader has won numerous Emmy awards for her television and photography work. Her most rewarding work was documenting life on the streets of Washington, DC in 2020, including issues of racial and social injustice, rising fascism and the assault on reproductive rights. That work became part of a co-authored documentary photography book, 2020 UNMASKED. Her wish is that beyond her life, her photographs will help us remember, recover from, and ultimately repair, the wrongs of these troubled times.

 

Nick Gervin is a documentary and fine art photographer from Portland, Maine and is the Executive Director of the Bakery Photographic Collective. Nick has had two traumatic brain injuries and now suffers from Post-Concussion Syndrome. As a disabled artist, all of his work is a direct result from his injuries. Nick’s work has been published in many local and international magazines, as well as in several photo books. He is currently working with Martin Amis and Tom Booth Woodger of Photo Editions on his forthcoming monograph, Portlanders.

 

Lori Grinker is an award-winning documentary photographer and author. Her work has garnered many awards including an Ernst Haas Award, a Hasselblad Foundation Grant, and an Open Society Community Engagement Grant. She has published three books: The Invisible Thread: A Portrait of Jewish American Women, Afterwar: Veterans from a World in Conflict, and Mike Tyson. She is an Assistant Professor of Journalism & Design at The New School, and teaches part time at New York University’s Arthur L Carter Graduate School of Journalism. Grinker is a senior member of Contact Press Images and is represented by ClampArt Gallery in New York City.

 

Cheryl L. Guerrero is a San Francisco-based photographer. Locally, she contributes to online media publications, chronicling life in the San Francisco Bay Area. Photography is a way for her to create and explore, while documenting life and relaying important stories. Her work revolves around people and the underlying themes of community, culture, and tradition.

 

Daniel Hoffman is a professor and photographer. Over the past 30 years, he has completed a number of photo documentaries in numerous countries including the U.S., Japan, Kenya, Brazil, and Bulgaria on topics ranging from the lives of Roma as refugees, underground music clubs, religion and worship in marginal communities, and the changing face of Times Square.

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Raymond W Holman Jr is a corporate and documentary photographer with over twenty years’ experience located in Philadelphia, PA. His client list includes The Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, New York Times, Politico, Philadelphia Health Department. Since March 2020, he has been working on a personal project titled “COVID-19 in Black America,” which focuses on how the pandemic has affected Black and Brown communities in Philadelphia, its surrounding area and Atlanta, GA.

 

Anthony Karen is a documentary photographer based in New York. His passion for photography began in Haiti, where he continues to document Vodou rituals and pilgrimages. Long-term projects include extensive documentation of White separatists, leading to two books, exhibitions in Bulgaria, Italy, the annual Noorderlicht Festival and two screenings at Visa Pour I’Image international photojournalism festival in France. He associate produced Ku Klux Klan en pasaporte Pampliega for Cuerdos de Atar TV in Madrid and has collaborated on other similarly-themed documentaries.

 

Born in the Kingdom of Bahrain, Ghada Khunji is a graduate of the Parsons School of Design and the International Center of Photography’s Documentary Program in New York. Khunji’s photographs are known for documenting both landscapes and people from all over the world and the inherent dignity of the human element. The recipient of several awards, including the Lucie Discovery of the Year, she has exhibited widely in the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East.

 

Stephen Mayes is Executive Director of the Tim Hetherington Trust with 30 years’ experience managing photography in the areas of fashion, art, commerce, and journalism. As creative director and as CEO, he has written successful business plans and reshaped operations for American, Asian, and European imaging companies. Stephen acted as secretary to the World Press Photo competition 2004–2012. Often described as a “futurist,” Stephen has broadcast, taught and written extensively about the ethics and practice of photography. 

 

After three decades as an award-winning advertising creative director and writer in New York, Kevin McKeon turned his deep curiosity and love for compelling stories to documentary photography full-time in 2018. Kevin seeks projects that can open minds and have a positive impact. Projects include exploring unexpected interactions between strangers sharing benches along Coney Island’s boardwalk, marching with and documenting the Black Lives Matter marches throughout NYC and Washington DC, and capturing the working lives and strong community of Black rodeo cowboys in Southeast Texas.

 

Dana Melaver is a writer and artist. Her work is rooted in the belief that everything is interesting, and often acts as a bridge among art, thought, and the sciences. Dana’s most recent projects include an experimental documentary about sustainable aquaculture, and an ode to the mischievous qualities of light.

 

Jared Ragland is a fine art and documentary photographer and former White House photo editor. His collaborative, socially-conscious work critically confronts issues of identity, marginalization, and the history of place. He currently serves as Assistant Professor of Photography at Utah State University in Logan, UT.

 

Susan Ressler is an artist, author, and educator who has been making social documentary photographs for nearly fifty years. Her work is in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Library and Archives Canada, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and many other collections. Her first monograph, Executive Order: Images of 1970s Corporate America, was published by Daylight Books in 2018. Dreaming California: High End, Low End, No End in Sight, will be released by Daylight in 2023. Ressler lives in Taos, New Mexico.

 

Jean Ross is a California-born photographer currently based in Brooklyn. She photographs places and the people who live in them. Jean has studied at the International Center of Photography and her work has been featured in solo shows at Viewpoint Gallery in Sacramento, California and Gallery 1855 in Davis, California and in group shows at the International Center of Photography and other galleries in Oaxaca, New York, and Los Angeles.

 

A native of Jamaica, Radcliffe “Ruddy” Roye has crisscrossed the country engaging on a personal level with the African-American experience, combining deep research, writing, and self-reflection to contextualize what he sees for his viewers. As one of the premier innovators and artist-activists on the Instagram platform, he has amassed 300,000 followers and was Time’s 2016 Instagram Photographer of the year. Widely exhibited and published, he has received assignments and been featured in such publications as The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic and Time.

 

Boston-based Matilde Simas is a visual journalist who has a BS in Psychology and Women’s Studies and attended Rhode Island School of Design to study photography. Her images have been published in the Trafficking in Persons Report, an annual U.S. State Department report, and in Kenyan research publications to advance anti-trafficking efforts. With photography exhibited by various United Nations agencies, Matilde founded Capture Humanity, an organization supporting grassroots community initiatives with storytelling media.

 

Jeanny Tsai is a photographer, storyteller, and lover of life specializing in documentary, ethnographic, and portrait photography. Jeanny has a passion for photographing people and cultures that express their devotion to the divine through rituals and celebrations and for those facing environmental or social challenges threatening established culturally rich ways of life, including in Brazil, India, Indonesia, Nepal, and the U.S. She desires that her photos convey a positive, uplifting testimony of people and places despite the existing external circumstances.

 

Lizzy Unger is a photographer, storyteller and communications consultant based in the DC area. She uses photography to document and elevate the work of local activists and everyday people working for change.

 

Kate Way is a critical educator, photographer, and documentary filmmaker based in western Massachusetts. Her interests lie in the intersection of media literacy, public education and policy, and social and economic justice. With a doctorate in Language, Literacy, and Culture, Kate is a Lecturer in the College of Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and director of the Visual Literacy Project, a secondary school documentary photography program. Her photography has been published on numerous platforms.

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