30 DAYS, 30 PHOTOGRAPHERS

We are profiling one donating photographer every day during the month leading up to Picture Equality: An Evening of Empowerment through Photography. This year's donations span from photojournalism to fine art, from social documentary to personal history, from aesthetics to activism and everything in between.

1. Ed Kashi is a photojournalist, filmmaker, and educator dedicated to documenting the social and political issues that define our time. As a member of VII Photo Agency, Kashi has been recognized for his complex imagery and its compelling rendering of the human condition. His work has garnered many prizes, including UNICEF's 2010 Photo of the Year Award and has been published in National Geographic, the New York Times Magazine, TIME Magazine and beyond. For more information, visit his website here.

              "Chinatown, San Francisco, CA 2003"

2. Throughout the course of her career as a photojournalist, Lexey Swall has received many accolades for her work including awards from Photo of the Year International (POYi) as well as Best of Photojournalism (BOP). Swall attended San Jose State University where she earned a Bachelor's of Science degree in photojournalism with a minor in women's studies. Swall worked as a photojournalist at the Naples (Fla.) Daily News for nearly 10 years. She recently left the newspaper to cofound a photo collective, Grain where she currently works. To see more of her work, please visit her website here.

3. This photograph was taken by a Critical Exposure student during their participation in our program. This year we will be auctioning this and four other student photos.

"From the front of the school, it looks like the students who used to go to Roosevelt would have a sense of pride. [As] students now, we should feel the same way about entering our front door. Your environment affects you. We are at school more than we are at home. It's like where you live - if our houses are in good condition, why can't our school be in decent condition? I think more people would want to come here if it was a better facility." -Alexandria, Roosevelt SHS

     "Declaration of Rejuvenation," Washington, DC 2011. 

4. Hank Willis Thomas works as a photo conceptual artist incorporating themes of identity, history and popular culture into his body of work. Thomas has worked as a visiting professor on both national and international fronts at institutions such as Yale University and the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, France. His work has been featured in many publications including 25 Under 25: Up and Coming American Photographers (CDS 2003) as well as 30 Americans (RFC 2008). He currently holds the honor of being an Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women and Gender In the Arts and Media, Columbia College Chicago Spring 2012 Fellow and is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery in New York City. For more examples of his work, visit his site here.

"Kama Mama, Kama Binti - Like Mother, Like Daughter 1971/2008"

5. An American photojournalist, Amy Toensing is dedicated to telling stories that embody sensitivity and depth. Most notably she is known for her ability to intimately portray the lives of ordinary people. Originally from New Hampshire, Toensing held a position as a photographer at her hometown paper, The Valley News and has also worked for the New York Times, Washington, DC bureau during the Clinton administration. After earning her Master’s Degree from the School of Visual Communication at Ohio University, she was awarded the National Geographic photographic internship and has since been a regular contributor to the National Geographic magazine among many other prestigious publications. Her portfolio can be viewed here.

"Girls Dresses Hang on a Laundry Line on a Porch," Utuado, Puerto Rico 2002.

6.  Bryan Derballa is a freelance documentary photographer living in Brooklyn, NY. Derballa has worked on projects and assignments in Israel, Colombia, Venezuela, Europe, Russia, New Zealand, India, and Brazil. His personal work focuses on transitions and in-between states, often relying on mood and feeling for connective emphasis. He has contributed work to The Wall Street Journal, Wired.com, MotherJones.com, and many other outlets. Two years ago at Picture Equality 2010, one of his photos started a vicious bidding war! To see more of Bryan's work, visit his website and his blog.

                    "Ghosts on the Runway," New York, 2012.

7. Jamie Fyson Howard is a British freelance photographer living in Krakow, Poland. He has worked for, among others, The Guardian, Gazeta Wyborcza (quality Poland daily paper), Louis Vuitton City Guides and Dorling Kindersley. Howard has been commissioned by galeriaArt Warsaw and his work is currently installed in private collections around the world. He is the recipient of several international competitions and awards including: dotART, Trieste, URBAN photograhy contest, 2012; The Printspace gallery, London “Shadows” contest 2012; and Are You a Futurist? Photoshelter Luminance, New York, 2012. To view more of his work, visit his blog here.

                       "Pub Interior," Krakow, Poland.

8. Originally from Michigan, David Rochkind studied sociology at the University of Michigan and shortly thereafter relocated to Caracas, Venezuela where his work as a freelance photographer began. His coverage of the region went on to be circulated in publications such as The New York Times Magazine, Time Newsweek, Rolling Stone and many others. Rochkind moved to Mexico City in 2008 where he began working on the book, Heavy Hand, Sunken Spirit which examines the long-term costs and consequences of the country's drug war (Dewi Lewis Publishing, October 2012). For the past four years, he has been working on a project concerning the global TB epidemic and developed his findings into an educational curriculum used by high school students. He has won awards from the National Press Photographer's Association, The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, and the World Health Organization among others. Rochkind is currently based in Port Au Prince, Haiti. For more examples of his work, please visit his site here.

                                   "Untitled," Kenya.

9. Keith Lane is a freelance photographer and multimedia producer based in Cairo, Egypt. Currently an Adjunct Professor of photography at American University in Cairo, he began his career in Southeast Asia working on a variety of health, education, and public policy projects for local and international NGOs. Keith is an alumnus of the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Portland, Maine and holds an M.S. in Environmental Education with a focus on international policy and advocacy from Lesley University. His work has appeared in multiple venues including FotoWeekDC, Studio Gallery, and the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, as well as exhibiting the first solo iPhone photography show in Washington, DC, at Hillyer Art Space. To view his portfolio, visit his site here.

                    "Tahrir Gathering," Cairo, Egypt 2012.

10. This photograph was taken by a Critical Exposure student during their participation in our program. This year we will be auctioning this and four other student photos.

Students learn many photography techniques in our program including "frame within a frame", which Gerald uses in this photo to frame his subject's eye.

                     "Untitled," Washington, DC 2011.

11. Peter DiCampo is a documentary photographer whose goal is to contribute his work to a dialogue on international development. He launched his freelance career while also working as a Peace Corps Volunteer in rural Ghana. Peter was named one of PDN’s 30 Emerging Photographers to Watch in 2012 and was a member of the VII Mentor Program from 2010 – 2012. He has received three grants from The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, in 2009, 2011, and 2012. For more information, visit his website here.

                                "Untitled," Kurdistan, Iraq.

12. Andrew Burton is a freelance photojournalist and multimedia producer based in New York. His work has been published in and distributed through The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, TIME amongst others. He has a degree in journalism with a focus in photography from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. Prior to becoming a photographer Burton interned at Getty Images, The Oregonian, Bloomberg News and The (Syracuse) Post-Standard. His work has been honored with awards from Photographer of the Year, International (POYi), the Hearst Foundation, Society of Professional Journalists, College Photographer of the Year and the Oregon Newspaper Publisher’s Association. Beyond his education and work experience, he has lived in New York City, Sydney, London and Portland, OR. To see more examples of his work, visit his website here.

                      "Untitled," Beijing, China 2008.

"China's Liang Huo lets his hair down while competing in the men's semifinal of the 10-meter diving competition at the Beijing Olympics. Of the 18 divers competing in the semifinals, Huo was the only one who did not dry his hair before diving." -Andrew Burton 

13. Dai Baker was born in South Wales but is now based in Washington D.C., where he is one of two US Bureau cameramen for the respected British television network ITN. He has received the prestigious White House News TV Photographer of the Year award for the last three years running. Winning the award has taken Mr. Baker into the heart of the White House, meeting President George W. Bush in the Oval Office and even getting a seat next to him at the WHNPA Awards Gala in May 2005. Despite his success with a TV camera, Dai's real passion is for still photography. It is a passion he has pursued for years as his day job has taken him all over the world. Everything from panoramic landscapes of his native Welsh valleys to informal, reportage-style wedding and portrait work is in his repertoire. We think his panoramic views of D.C. aren't too shabby either, especially when they're printed over five feet wide. To see more of his work, please visit his site here.

  "Untitled, Space Shuttle Discovery," Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

14. Mark Hartman is a fine art, editorial, and advertising photographer based in New York City. His work has appeared in many publications including Esquire, Spin and Monocle. His personal photography has been featured in several blogs and magazines including The British Photography Journal, American Photo and CNN. He has exhibited internationally and his work has been increasingly privately collected. In 2012, he was named a PDN 30 photographer to watch. To see more examples of his work, visit his site here.

           "Untitled," Dusk at San Blas islands.

15. Daniel Kukla, a native of Indianapolis, Indiana, currently resides in Brooklyn, New York where he works as a freelance and fine art photographer. He is a graduate of The International Center of Photography program in Documentary Photography and Photojournalism. Prior to his photographic education, he attended The University of Toronto and received his B.Sc. in Evolutionary Ecology, Biology, and Evolutionary Human Anatomy. He works at the juncture of these disciplines, focusing in on capturing images that have the power to articulate our ever-changing relationship with the natural world. His work has been exhibited in the United States, the United Kingdom, Burma, Canada, China, Malaysia, Singapore and Spain, and has been published in the New York Times, The Washington Post, Times Magazine, On Earth Magazine, Guernica Magazine, Esquire, and National Geographic. If you would like to see more of his work, visit his site here.

                        "Untitled," Hibiscus Collection.

16. Mark Parascandola is a photographer based in Washington DC. A PhD epidemiologist by training, he uses photography to explore patterns of movement in human populations, focusing on architecture as evidence of often-invisible social, environmental, and economic processes. Mark has family roots in the desert landscape of Almería, Spain, and he is currently documenting the remains of old movie sets constructed in the region during the 1960s and 1970s. His work has been featured at galleries in Washington DC and in Spain and appears in the DC Art Bank and numerous individual collections. He is an active member of the Washington Project for the Arts and the Mid City Artists. Last year Mark was selected as a finalist for the 2011 Sondheim Prize and was exhibited at the Baltimore Museum of Art. His project 'Once Upon a Time in Almería' is currently on view at the Embassy of Spain in Washington DC. Visit his site here for more examples of his work.

                        "Bains-Douches," Almería, Spain.

17. This photograph was taken by a Critical Exposure student during their participation in our program. This year we will be auctioning this and four other student photos.

"This is a sidewalk where they are doing construction." -Leticia, College Freshman

             "Untitled," Weed and Seed, Washington, DC 2011.

18. Matt Eich was born in Richmond, Virginia in 1986 and is the oldest of four children. He grew up in the peanut-farming town of Suffolk, Virginia. Watching his grandmother’s battle with Alzheimer’s disease was a formative experience and a road trip with his grandfather cemented his early relationship with photography. Eich began working as a freelance photographer while studying photojournalism at Ohio University for clients that have come to include GQ, Esquire, Mother Jones, TIME, Fader, Harper's, Apple and National Geographic among others. Matt has been named one of PDN’s 30 Emerging Photographers to Watch and is currently working with support of grants from ShootQ, NPPA, Aaron Siskind Foundation and National Geographic Magazine. His prints are in the permanent collections of The Portland Art Museum and The Museum of Fine Arts Houston. These days Eich lives in Norfolk, Virginia with his family while compulsively documenting everything around him. To view more of his work, visit his site here.

 

                  "Groundhog Day," Punxsutawney, Pa 2012.

"Punxsutawney Phil perches on the back of his handler, John Griffiths, in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania on Groundhog Day, Thursday, February 2, 2012." - Matt Eich

19. In September 2010, Stephen Mallon's solo exhibitiion “Next Stop Atlantic" opened with great responses from National Public Radio, A Curator, DVICE, The L magazine, Flavor Wire, The Atlantic, Fast Company, Feature Shoot, GQ,  and My Modern Metropolis.  In 2009, Mallon made a big splash with his stunning “Brace for Impact: The Salvage of Flight 1549,” a series of photographs documenting the salvaging of the US Air flight that, amazingly, airline captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger had managed to safely emergency-land in the Hudson River in on January 15, 2009. The images Mallon produced during the two-week effort by maritime contractor Weeks Marine have since been exhibited in New York and featured on numerous websites, in print, and on TV. In the spring of 2012 “Brace for Impact: The Salvage of Flight 1549” will be exhibited at Webster University in St.Louis. Most recently, Stephen spent over six months producing a short film about the transport and installation of the new Willis Avenue bridge. Produced from over 30,000 still images the time lapse film "A Bridge Delivered"  was reviewed by the Wall St Journal, New York Magazine, GQ, PDN and WIRED. Since 2002, Mallon has been a board member of the New York chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers and served as president from 2006 to 2009. He lives in New York with his wife and their young daughter. More of his work can be viewed here.

                              "Next Stop Atlantic"

20. Charlie Gaynor's interest in photography was launched at the University of Kansas where he graduated with a degree in Fine Arts, specializing in Commercial Art.  After attending the Army’s Photo School at Ft. Monmouth, New Jersey, he was awarded the opportunity to serve over the course of 15 months as General Creighton Abrams personal photographer. In 1971, Gaynor's Army career came to an end in Washington, D.C. and he soon began work as a photographer at PHOTRI, a stock photo agency based in Virginia. During this time, Gaynor took a color printing course where he learned to print Cibachrome prints. This experience led him to begin viewing photography as a type of fine art. In May of 2006 Gaynor attendedThe Ultimate Travel Photographer’s Workshop in Paris, France which was sponsored by the American Writers and Artists Inc. (AWAI). For the past twenty-five years, selling real estate has been his business interest and photography is his passion. To view more of his work, visit his site here.

                       "Rolling Artesa"

21. Damon Winter joined the staff of the New York Times in May of 2007 after working as a staff photographer at the Los Angeles Times and the Dallas Morning News. Damon has covered a broad range of stories including conflicts in Israel and Afghanistan, 9/11 in New York, the Olympic games and feature stories in Vietnam, Cuba, Russia and India among others. He was recently named Newspaper Photographer of the Year by the University of Missouri’s POY competition and Photojournalist of the Year in NPPA’s Best of Photojournalism competition and was awarded the Visa d’Or for News in 2010 for his coverage of the Haiti Earthquake. His coverage of Barack Obama’s historic campaign for the presidency was awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Feature photography. Recently, A Year at War, Damon's multimedia project documenting the lives of one battalion of US Army soldiers deployed in Afghanistan, won an Emmy award for News and Documentary. Damon currently ives in Manhattan with his girlfriend Beatrice and his cat Pearl. His work can be found here and in the pages of the New York Times.

                          "Untitled"

                         "Untitled"

22. Callie Shell has documented five presidential campaigns. Currently a contract photographer for Time magazine, she began working at the White House in the fall of 1992 when she was asked to cover the Clinton and Gore inauguration and their first hundred days in office. Those six weeks turned into eight years at the White House as she became Vice President Al Gore's official photographer. She also met Barack Obama in 2004 while covering John Kerry's presidential campaign for Time magazine and ended up sending her editor more photographs of Obama than Kerry. When asked why, she said, "I just have a feeling about him. I think he will be important down the road." Her first photo essay on Obama appeared in Time magazine in 2006, and she has been alongside his team ever since. More than any other photographer, Ms. Shell was able to capture the private side of Obama's candidacy in unguarded moments. It is estimated that to date she has captured nearly 400,000 images of the Obama campaign and the events surrounding it. Ms. Shell states, "We just got on really well. He has two children, I have one - his daughter and my son are almost the same age and he's really funny." The photographer's book, "President Obama: The Path to The White House" reached the New York Times Bestseller List in 2008. See more of her work here.

                                               "Untitled"

23.  David Walter Banks is a conceptually based documentary and portrait photographer living in Atlanta, Georgia. His work is aimed at questioning the way in which we view the everyday reality around us. He has documented both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions of 2008, explored the allure of the road in the American psyche, and visualized the "fourth wall" that separates audiences from the fictional world presented to them in art, media, and culture. Banks was a candidate for the 2009 and 2010 PDN30, and his work was recognized by the 2009 Magenta Foundation Flash Forward 2009 census of emerging photographers. Mr. Banks' work has appeared in The New York Times, Stern Magazine, TIME Magazine, GQ, Spin Magazine, Interscope Records, and Bloomberg News, to name but a few. To see more of Mr. Banks' work, click here.

                                          "Untitled" 

24. This photograph was taken by a Critical Exposure student during their participation in our program. This year we will be auctioning this and four other student photos. 

While practicing composition techniques on a photo walk, Corinthian encounters a photo of another CE student hanging in Columbia Heights. 

                        "Untitled," Washington, DC 2011. 

25. Sol Neelman is a failed athlete turned professional photographer. From 1997-2007 he was a newspaper photojournalist, on the staff at the Oregonian for seven of those years. In 2007 he and several other staffers won the Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News Photography for their coverage of a missing family in southern Oregon. Over the years his photos have appeared in National Geographic, ESPN the Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone, Newsweek, and in many other publications. In 2007 he decided to pursue his three interests: sports, travel, and weird stuff. Thus was born the book Weird Sports, which truly lives up to its name. See more of Mr. Neelman's work here.

                                         "Dog Surfing"

                                       "Suicide Race"

26. Originally from Evergreen Park, Illinois, Scott Strazzante first became interested in photography when he started taking his dad’s camera to Chicago White Sox baseball games. After graduating from Ripon College, Strazzante began his photojournalism career when he was hired part-time at the Daily Calumet in Lansing, Illinois. Since then, he has worked for publications such as the Daily Southtown in Chicago and the Joliet Herald-News where in 1998, he was named National Newspaper Photographer of the Year by the National Press Photographers Association and the Missouri School of Journalism. Strazzante began working at the Chicago Tribune in 2001 and currently works there as a general staff photographer. Strazzante has covered the Super Bowl, the World Series and three Olympic Games, but finds the most pleasure in uncovering small but universal moments in daily life. Strazzante was recently named Northern Illinois University’s Journalist of the Year and was a small part of the Chicago Tribune team that won a Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting in 2007 for a series on faulty government regulation of dangerously defective toys, cribs and car seats. In 2008, MediaStorm published Strazzante's Common Ground, a multimedia piece documenting the transformation of a piece of land in suburban Chicago from rural to suburban. Visit his site here for more examples of his work. 

                                              "Untitled"

27. This photograph was taken by a Critical Exposure student during their participation in our program. This year we will be auctioning this and four other student photos.

"When there was no one to listen, art was my loudest cry [for help]." -Samera, Critical Exposure Fellowship Program

                                        "Untitled" 

28. Joyce Yu-Jean Lee hails from Dallas, Texas earning an MFA from the Mount Royal School of Art at the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2010 and a BA in Communications from University of Pennsylvania in 2002. She is the recipient of the 2010 Henry Walters Traveling Scholarship to The Netherlands and Germany, a Joan Mitchell Fellowship to the Vermont Studio Center and a residency at the Blue Sky Project. Prior to her MFA, Joyce worked as the programming and art director for nonprofit arts organization, International Arts Movement in New York City. Joyce creates “projection paintings” that reframe historical depictions of illumination through a synthesis of drawing, performance and architectural video installation. She resides with her turtle, Biddy, and enjoys cruising around Baltimore on her 1979 Puch moped. To see more of her work, visit her site here.

                                          "Worker Girl"

29. Born and raised in the Washington, DC area, Andrew Harnik has worked as a newspaper and magazine photojournalist since 2003. He has been recognized with awards from the White House News Photographers Association for the past five years. This year Harnik won six awards including four first-place awards in the White House News Photographers Association’s annual “Eyes of History” competition and finished second overall, losing the Photographer of the Year award only on a tiebreaker. His biggest award this year was winning the Political Photo of the Year award for his image of presidential hopeful Ron Paul delivering a speech as a military veteran raises his fist in support. The photo is part of Harnik’s award-winning portfolio tracking Republican candidates on the campaign trail for the The Washington Times. This work is currently on display in the Newseum as part of a group show called "The Eyes of History" which will be on display until March 29, 2013. Harnik's work has taken him from speeches at the White House to football playoffs at Seattle’s Quest Field, from the human tragedy at the Virginia Tech campus to the Hurricane Katrina disaster in the Gulf Coast. He has covered the momentous celebrations of Barack Obama's rise to the presidency and visits to the U.S. by the Queen of England and Pope Benedict XVI. Much of Andrew's work has also been focused on Capitol Hill, telling stories of the nation's capital and beyond that are often overlooked. He believes that the stories of everyday people are as rewarding and important as covering high profile events and public figures. For more of his work, visit his site here.

                           "Mass Baptism," Washington, D.C.

"Members of the United House of Prayer get emotional as hundreds are mass baptized in the street by [a] blessed water shot from a fire hose in Washington, D.C." -Andrew Harnik

30. Mario Tama is an Emmy-Award nominated staff photographer for Getty Images based in New York City. He studied photojournalism at Rochester Institute of Technology where he graduated in 1993. He began shooting for the journal papers in suburban Washington, D.C. before freelancing for the Washington Post and Agence France-Presse in Washington. Mario joined Getty Images in 2001 and has since covered global events including September 11, the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, the funeral of Pope John Paul II and more recently Hurricane Katrina - before, during and after the storm. He has received numerous awards from Pictures of the Year International (POYi), NPPA's Best of Photojournalism Competition and the White House News Photographers Association. His work on Baghdad's orphans was exhibited at Visa Pour L'Image in France and his photographs from Hurricane Katrina were featured in National Geographic, Newsweek and newspapers worldwide. To view more of Tama's work, visit his site here.

              "Untitled," New Orleans, La. 

"Angel Price talks on her mobile phone with her daughters Brielle (L), 8 and Cache, 2, as the Original Big 7 Social and Pleasure Club holds a traditional 'Second Line' parade in the Seventh Ward May 14, 2006 in New Orleans, Louisiana. The tradition sprang from when African Americans formed brass marching bands and fraternal groups to perform elaborate 'jazz funerals' for their associates. Today was the first time the parade was held since Hurricane Katrina." -Mario Tama