About
Ken Light is a photographer whose work has appeared in books, magazines, exhibitions and numerous anthologies, exhibition catalogues and a variety of media, digital and motion picture. He got his start in 1969 photographing for alternative/underground newspapers and magazines. His work was widely published in posters, books and hundreds of periodicals.
His most recent book is Report to the Shareholders (2023 Steidl) supported with a Guggenheim Fellowship and is a documentary photography project that is focused on the swing states of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania and upstate New York, most often labeled as the Rust Belt, in the post 2020 presidential election period. The loss of manufacturing jobs and the decline of this region have wider implications for our national economy and the social fabric of the country as well as for our very own democracy. The book asks how did we let this happen?
Course of the Empire (2021 Steidl) which begins in 2011 when Ken traveled across the United States photographing the country, an empire that he realized was the most fragile of organisms.The resulting portrait of the American social landscape is a riveting historical and visual record of a complicated country in a complicated time.
Midnight La Frontera (2020 TBW) presents Light’s work from 1983-1987 and offers testimony of the night border crossing for those looking for a chance at the American Dream with the first hand and compelling memoir of José Ángel Navejas, in English and Spanish.
What’s Going On? 1969-1974 (Light Squared Media 2015) explores his earliest work as a young photographer documenting the social landscape of America as it roiled with upheaval.
Valley of Shadows & Dreams (Heyday Books) was published in 2012. This work was published in the New York Times, Newsweek/Daily Beast, N.Y. Review of Books, Huffington Post Voces and this work was exhibited in one person shows at the Oakland Museum of California, Umbrage Gallery, Arte Americas and S.E. Museum of Photography. It received the California Book Award in 2013.
His previous book, Coal Hollow (University of California Press) was published in 2005. It presents arresting black and white photographs and powerful oral histories that chronicle the legacy of coal mining in southern West Virginia.
Texas Death Row (1997) is a look at life inside the death house as the condemned wait to be executed in Americas largest and most active Death Row. This work was published in Newsweek Magazine (6 pgs), Paris Match (France -- 8 pgs), Tempo (Germany -- 6 pgs), London Telegraph, Nieuwe Revu (Amsterdam -- 6 pgs) and in Japan, Korea, Holland, Denmark, Mexico, Spain, Italy as well as on Newsweek Online, and MSNBC.com Online.
He is also the author of Delta Time published in 1995 by the Smithsonian Institution Press. This book looks at rural Black poverty, cotton and the southern landscape. Delta Time has 104 photographs and an essay by legendary civil rights organizer Bob Moses. This work has been published in VSD in Paris, Granta, the London Independent, Spanish Ellewith Walker Evans and in the Academy Award nominated documentary film Freedom on My Mind.
His other books are To The Promised Land (Aperture 1988), which examines the lives of farm workers and their journey from Mexico illegally to the United States and with an introduction by Cesear Chavez. With These Hands (Pilgrim Press 1986), and In the Fields (Harvest Press 1982) are earlier explorations of farm labor in the U.S.
A text, Witness In Our Time: The Lives of Social Documentary Photographers was published by the Smithsonian Institution Press in October 2000 and a second edition was published in 2010 . It is in its fourth printing and has been adapted by numerous University and College documentary photo programs as well as being translated and published in Turkey.
Signed copies of these books are available at http://Squareup.com/market/kenlight-photo
He has exhibited internationally in over 225 one-person and group shows, including one person shows at the International Center for Photography, Oakland Museum of California, San Jose Museum of Modern Art, Visual Studies Workshop, Visa pour L’image Perpignan (France), International Fotoage (Germany), S.E. Museum of Photography, Yerba Buena Center S.F. and Smith College. His work is part of numerous collections including the San Francisco MoMA, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the International Center of Photography and the American Museum of Art at the Smithsonian, Library of Congress, Helmut Gernsheim Collection and many others including private collections.
He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Photographers Fellowships, a NEA survey and publication grant, the Dorothea Lange Fellowship and a fellowship from the Erna and Victor Hasselblad Foundation as well as grants from the Soros Open Society Institute, the American Film Institute, the California Arts Commission, International Fund for Concerned Photography, the Rosenberg Foundation and the Max and the Anna Levinson Foundation as well as the Johnathan Logan Family Foundation. Other awards include the Media Alliance Meritorious Achievement award in photography, the Thomas More Storke International Journalism Award.
He is the Reva and David Logan Professor of Photojournalism and curator of the Center for Photography at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California Berkeley, and was the 2012 Laventhol Visiting Professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He has also taught workshops at many school and photo festivals including at the ICP in New York City, The Missouri Photo Workshop, S.F. Art Institute and in the School for Photographic Studies in Prague and Baltimore. He was a founder of the Mother Jones International Fund for Documentary Photography, which awarded grants to photographers worldwide, as well a founder of Fotovision a non-profit documentary photo organization which was based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
His editorial work is represented by Contact Press Images.
contact him at studio@kenlight.com
