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…
Category: art
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…
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…
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…
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….
Ethiopian Coffee Country
In January of 2015 I spent a week photographing in the Ethiopian coffee regions for Green Mountain Coffee. Here is a small sampling of the 3000 images I made. The job called for mostly landscapes (to be used on the boxes of a new product) but I couldn’t help but to capture the workers as well and also show the…
J’Ouvert in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. New York City’s greatest folkloric festival.
All Text from “J’ouvert in Brooklyn Carnival: Revitalizing Steel Pan and Ole Mas Traditions”. Author: Ray Allen “The rumble of distant drums rolls across Prospect Park, breaking the pre-dawn tranquility that envelops central Brooklyn on Labor Day morning.My watch says 4 a.m.-the J’Ouvert celebration must be underway. Quietly slipping out of my apartment into the cool of…
Walking the streets of Addis Ababa is extremely dangerous!
Ethiopia is a million different things and tastes, affronts, foibles and wonders. One thing it was not was a place you felt threatened by personal violence. Ethiopians were fun, interested, helpful and cool. Ethiopia is considered to be one of the safest countries for tourists in Africa.No muggings, no assaults, no rape, etc.. But, taking a stroll…
The Machu Picchu that never really made it up onto Machu Picchu This.
Was digging thru the archives recently looking for landscape photography for a possible upcoming job and found lots of stuff I never really posted. All from a couple weeks up at Machu Picchu and in Cusco, Peru.
Joshua Kristal, Photographer 