A recent job had me creating new images for the stellar, human rights activist and radical feminist Farah Tanis. Cool, minimal design by Betta Lang. Check out the new site here. Check out some of her projects including a museum in Crown Heights devoted to promoting Transnational and Black Feminist histories and traditions as well as this activist…
The Badass Tattooed, Tribal women processing your Ethiopian coffee.
While in Ethiopia a few years ago I was invited to photograph at the facilities of a prominent coffee exporter. Addis Exporter sources and exports green coffee beans around the world (that day by chance, two of the best coffee purveyors in the US were there cupping the offerings; Intelligentsia and Counter Culture Coffee). The space was…
Volunteer work for La FEM: Fundacion Entre Mujeres, an NGO in Nicaragua.
I recently returned from almost two months in Nicaragua where I worked and volunteered for several organizations. Lending my photographic services to needy charitable organizations is something I have been doing for 20 years as I feel strongly in the power of the still image to effect public change. By donating my services for organizations…
Sunday afternoon Baseball in a Nicaraguan cloudforest.
I recently spent a month in Nicaragua working, volunteering and travelling the country. A highlight was the time I spent with a small agricultural community living within a Nature Reserve in the North Central mountainous region. MiraFlor lies in a cloud forest, a tropical forest with lots of moss, wet vegetation and yes, low-level clouds….
Two Brooklynites experience Timkat, The Ethiopian “Day of Epiphany”.
Two Brooklynites do Timkat by Nina Granados (Nina and I travelled together for two weeks in Northern Ethiopia in January of 2015 when I was working there on a Getty Images/Lean-In.org grant.) Most of us westerners have a romanticization towards what is foreign from our daily scraps of living in an industrialized landscape. For a…
My lecture at the MSU Arts and Humanities Dept.
I recently was honored to participate in the Wednesday Night Live lecture series at the Residential College of the Arts and Humanities at Michigan State University. I spoke on two topics: Living as a Creative and the Power of the Still Image. In preparing for the talk I stumbled upon the roots of my becoming a photographer. …
Work featured in the New York Times. The Lost Rolls America Project
Almost every professional photographer who came up before digital eclipsed analog has something a little bit strange in common and that is, a bag of old film in their refrigerator. Working with film on a daily basis, in it many different formats, professional life mixing with the personal, random rolls of film invariably piled up…
Nonprofit work in West Bengal, India
Here is a selection of images for a nonprofit I worked with in West Bengal, India in 2004. I spent two weeks with the Economic Rural Development Society photographing the many different operations they conduct around the state for their marketing materials. These portraits were for their “Adopt-a-Granny” program.
Madagascar images used for NYC Subway art proposal.
The MTA, the NYC Subway transit authority, has a call for artists to design installations for several stations. I submitted these images with the concept of taking people on a journey thru Madagascar with a dynamic, color filled dose of nature, culture and adventure while they hustle along underground. The images, mostly shot on a point and…
Carnival in Crown Heights
Decided this year to skip J’Ouvert the folkloric musical procession that opens the West Indian Labor Day festivities and just stroll Eastern Parkway, meandering through the almost 2 million attendees. The smell of bad weed, BBQ and sweat is omnipresent, as is the incredible costumes which root from each of the island’s cultural traditions.
Watch this video while you run on the treadmill! A 30 minute film for Girls Gotta Run of Southern Ethiopia.
I recently completed my first film which was funded by a 2014 grant I received from Getty Images and Lean-In.org. The piece was made for Girls Gotta Run, a nonprofit organization out of Washington D.C. that facilitates running clubs in Southern Ethiopia for young women. The video was crafted to be watched as one runs on a treadmill and to immerse the runner…
Video on the Ethiopian coffee ceremony
In Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee, the daily drinking of this ancient beverage is part of a ritualized cultural ceremony rich in history and sometimes hours in length. The beans are freshly roasted, incense is burned and multiple cups are passed around. The 30 minute video I recently completed for an Ethiopian nonprofit has this 2 minute video about the ceremony with-in it….
Joshua Kristal, Photographer 