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 newspapers and magazines which were widely published in posters, books and hundreds of periodicals. His book What’s Going On? 1969-1974 explores his earliest work as a young photographer documenting the social landscape of America as it roiled with upheaval. His most recently published book Midnight La Frontera is available from TBW Books.
Light received two National Endowment for the Arts Photographers Fellowships, a N.E.A 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.
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.
website: kenlight.com
instagram: @kenlight_photo_