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Ed Kashi has dedicated his photographic career to documenting the social and political issues that define our times. His unflinching eye and intimate relationship to his subjects have become the signatures of his award-winning work. His complex imagery has been recognized for its compelling rendering of the human condition.
Kashi was born in New York City. In 1979, upon graduating with a degree in photojournalism from Syracuse University, he began working as a photographer. He has since photographed in over 60 countries and his images have appeared in National Geographic, The New York Times Magazine, Time, Fortune, Geo, Newsweek and many other domestic and international publications. His work has received numerous awards and is exhibited worldwide.
His first major documentary project was on the Protestant community in Northern Ireland. Kashi spent three years (1988-1991) on this subject and in 1991 received an NEA grant which enabled him to self-publish a book titled, The Protestants: No Surrender. This study would set the tone for future explorations of groups in conflict who have been neglected by the mainstream media. In the mid-90's, Kashi spent several years documenting the lives of Jewish settlers in the West Bank. The settlers' story has been published worldwide, and a photograph from this essay received an award in the World Press Photo 1995 competition.
Since 1991 Kashi has completed nine major stories for the National Geographic. His first project for the magazine was on the Kurds, a project he proposed, and it became a cover story. It was subsequently published as his second monograph,When the Borders Bleed: The Struggle of the Kurds (Pantheon). His collaboration with National Geographic, among other publications, has produced a growing body of work on the modern Middle East.
Between editorial assignments and personal projects, Kashi teaches and mentors students of photography, participates in forums, and lectures on photojournalism and documentary photography. In 1998 he taught a semester in London for Syracuse University.
Kashi has just completed an eight-year project with his wife, writer Julie Winokur. Aging in America: The Years Ahead, published in the fall of 2003 by PowerHouse Books, examines the social impact of the expanding elderly population in the United States. Features from this project have won awards from the Pictures of the Year and World Press Photo competitions, and have been chosen for the American Photography and Communication Arts annuals. This work continues to be published and exhibited extensively around the world. This project has been supported, in part, by grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Open Society InstituteÕs Project on Death in America and the California Endowment.
In December of 2002 Kashi and Winokur founded Talking Eyes Media, a non-profit educational multimedia company, that explores social issues through visually compelling materials. The first documentary project for Talking Eyes Media produced a book and traveling exhibition on uninsured Americans called, Denied: The Crisis of America's Uninsured. The book was published in March 2003 and the exhibition continues to travel across America.
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Ed Kashi
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