Ryan Anson Archive

Ryan Anson is a freelance photojournalist currently based in San Francisco. Although many of his pictures are about social, political and religious issues in the Philippines, he has worked in 15 countries in Africa, Asia, and Central America.

Over the last three years, he has completed stories for a variety of magazines and newspapers including The Washington Post, TIME-Asia, and The Saturday Times Magazine (London). Anson also produced numerous visual advocacy projects for international and Philippines-based non-government organizations such as Community and Family Services International, Compassion Canada, Shangilia Mtoto wa Afrika and the United Nations Development Program. In 2004, he published a monograph with Tambayan Center about girl gangs in the southern Philippine city of Davao. Entitled “In the Shadows of Davao”, the book’s pictures and text explore how teenaged girls cope with daily threats of gang violence, sexual exploitation, and summary execution in a place once rated as the most child-friendly city in the Philippines. When not working on longer-term documentaries, Anson collaborates with the International Alliance for Peacebuilding (Interpeace) on photographing societies that are recovering from conflict.