Ken Light‘s 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 12th and 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?
Ken has exhibited internationally in over 225 one-person and group shows, and 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 & 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.
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