Monroe Gallery of Photography specializes in 20th- and 21st-century photojournalism and humanist imagery—images that are embedded in our collective consciousness and which form a shared visual heritage for human society. They set social and political changes in motion, transforming the way we live and think—in a shared medium that is a singular intersectionality of art and journalism.
— Sidney and Michelle Monroe
In a Turkish terrorist court in Diyarbakir, this Kurdish woman was sentenced to 13 years in prison, accused of belonging to the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which seeks to create an independent state in southeastern Turkey, 2006
Even people who don’t know Ed Kashi’s name are often familiar with his photographs. Over the course of his nearly 50-year career, the award-winning photojournalist has created memorable long-form photo-essays for National Geographic, and his work has been published in Time, Newsweek and The New York Times. The World Photography Organisation has called him “one of the leading and most innovative photojournalists of our time.” Kashi’s current, career-spanning exhibition at Monroe Gallery of Photography in Santa Fe, “Ed Kashi: A Period in Time,” is also the title of his most recent book. The exhibition runs through Nov. 16.
Known for documenting some of the world’s most challenging social and geopolitical issues, Kashi’s subjects have ranged from Protestants in Northern Ireland during the time of the Troubles to oil workers in the Niger Delta to America’s rapidly aging population.
Ed Kashi
A worker subcontracted by Shell Oil Company cleans up an oil spill from a well owned by Shell that had been left abandoned for over 25 years, 2004
“One of the many reasons that I feel so fortunate that I’ve been able to have a long career in this field is that I get to really go deep with issues and subjects that I come to truly care about and that I think that are important,” Kashi said.
One thing that sets Kashi apart from more events-driven news photographers is the length of time he spends with his subjects. He often embeds himself with the groups he’s documenting for months on end, returning year after year for decades-long projects.
“I often say I’m as much of an anthropologist as I am a journalist,” Kashi said. “While many of my projects have a journalistic edge, or they’re topical — like oil in Nigeria or Jewish settlers in the West Bank — I’m not a great news photographer, and frankly, I don’t like working in situations where there’s a lot of other media around. It always feels intrusive to me, and it makes me uncomfortable.
“I much prefer to work where my subjects, or collaborators, as I like to call them, are my own, and I’m able to develop a direct relationship,” he said.
One of Kashi’s longest-running photojournalism projects centered on the Kurdish diaspora. He began photographing the Kurds for National Geographic in 1991 — his first major project for the magazine — and kept returning to the subject for the next three decades.
“It was something I really cared about, and I was given this tremendous support that only National Geographic could give, where I went to eight countries — not only in the Middle East, but in the Kurdish diaspora in Germany and the U.K. — and I was really able to spend time to tell a very deep story about what was the largest ethnic group in the world without a nation of their own,” Kashi said. “The Kurds have the geopolitical misfortune of being in what is now Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria, mainly, so not the friendliest places for a minority group.”
“I think I got in because I was following a Kurdish human rights lawyer, so I sort of traipsed into the courtroom with him and made a few pictures. And that ended up being a very significant image,” Kashi said. “But after that image appeared in the magazine, they (the Turkish government) confiscated all the copies of (that) 1992 issue of National Geographic within Turkey.”
Despite the attempted censorship, that image, and others from the series, reached a wide international audience. Kashi credits those images with bringing much greater attention to the persecution of the Kurds, a subject that had previously gone underreported.
The Turkish government, meanwhile, grew increasingly restrictive on press freedom. Government repression is an ever-present challenge for photojournalists around the world, Kashi said, and something he has contended with many times.
“For journalists, and particularly for photographers, there is a constant battle of how much can we get away with. How close can we get? What can we access? And when that gets shut down, we have to find other ways to gain access,” he said.
The global landscape for press freedom has gotten significantly worse in recent years, according to Kashi, with widespread and concerted attacks on journalists that he calls “unprecedented.”
“Look at our own Pentagon and the restrictions they’re trying to place on the media,” Kashi said. “It’s a very interesting and tricky moment right now for the media in general, all around the world. There’s been an increase in journalists being arrested, imprisoned and in some cases killed, particularly in Gaza.”
Although Kashi said he has sometimes risked his life for stories, he was never deliberately targeted, the way he said some journalists are currently being targeted and killed in places such as Gaza and Ukraine.
“I’ve not worked in Ukraine, but a colleague of mine, who works a lot with the New York Times as a photographer, was just saying, the scariest thing is when you’re driving down a highway and you hear a drone overhead. It’s not even about (accidentally being hit by) missiles or bombardment from planes or artillery. It’s that a drone can take your car out because they suspect you of being the enemy, or they just want to,” Kashi said. “They know you’re a journalist. They wanted to target you.”
Despite the dangers, photojournalists continue doing their jobs, Kashi said, because they know it can change people’s hearts and minds. Kashi has seen the far-reaching impact his own work has had, and he hopes it will inspire others.
“If you tell good stories, and you tell them in an authentic and sincere way, you can reach people. You can penetrate their consciousness,” Kashi said. “And whether they donate money, or they get involved through their actions, or, at the very least, you might change their mind about something. That’s the reason we must do this work.”
Ed Kashi
A journey, made in 1999, to some of Peru's most outstanding natural and man-made sights. A cloudy view near Machu Picchu.
Ed Kashi and Julie Winokur: American Sketches: People of a Place at This Time
Nina Berman, Photographer & Professor of Journalism, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Richard Sharum, Spina America
Dudley Brooks, Moderator
In 2025, America finds itself in a very confused and divided place. 250 years ago, it embarked on the greatest experiment in human history to overthrow the old norms of monarchies and despotic rule. America thrived, evolved, and conflicted during those two-and-a-half centuries.
Today, Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address penned 161 years ago is more relevant than at any other time since it was first spoken.
Four score and seven years ago, our forefathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
Today we are testing whether this nation can long endure. The photographers in this panel will present to us a heartfelt and critical view of what America looks and feels like today.
Dudley Brooks
Originally from Baltimore, Maryland, Dudley M. Brooks was the Deputy Director of Photography for The Washington Post, where he managed the creative strategy and production of photo-oriented content for the Features, Local and Sports departments. He was also the Photo Editor for The Washington Post Magazine before it was discontinued in 2022. From 2007-2014 he was the Director of Photography and Senior Photo Editor for the monthly magazine Ebony and its weekly sister periodical Jet. These iconic publications chronicled the African American experience for nearly eight decades and Brooks was a key member of the senior staff responsible for redefining the visual prominence and editorial relevance to their international readerships. Brooks was also the Assistant Managing Editor of Photography at The Baltimore Sun newspaper (2005-2007) and the co-creator/director of the landmark 1990 photography book and exhibition Songs of My People: African Americans – A Self-Portrait. This was an international project sponsored by Time-Warner and the Smithsonian Institute Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES). In 2003 he created and co-directed Imagenes Havana. This event was a five-day exhibition in Havana, Cuba that displayed the work of twenty-five international storytelling photographers. It was supplemented by three days of roundtable forums that addressed the difficulties of documenting the international community, opportunities in photo book publishing, and ethical issues facing the working photographer from a global perspective. Brooks retired from The Washington Post in late 2024.
Nina Berman
Nina Berman is a documentary photographer, filmmaker, journalist and educator. Her work explores American politics, militarism, environmental issues and post violence trauma. She is the author of Purple Hearts – Back from Iraq, (Trolley, 2004) portraits and interviews with wounded American veterans, Homeland, (Trolley, 2008) an examination of the militarization of American life post September 11, and An autobiography of Miss Wish (Kehrer, 2017) a story told with a survivor of sexual violence which was shortlisted for both the Aperture and Arles book prizes. Additional fellowships, awards and grants include: the World Press Photo Foundation, Pictures of the Year International, the Open Society Foundation, the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, the MIT Knight Science Journalism Fellowship and the Aftermath Project. She started her photographic career in 1988 as an independent photographer working on assignment for the world’s major magazines including Time, Newsweek, Life, the New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine, German Geo, and the Sunday Times Magazine. Her work has been exhibited at more than 100 international. Public collections include the Smithsonian National Museum of American History; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Museum of the City of New York; the Harvard Art Museums; and the Bibliothèque nationale de France among others. She is a tenured Professor of Journalism at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where she directs the photojournalism/documentary photography program.
Ed Kashi
Ed Kashi is a renowned photojournalist, filmmaker, speaker and educator who has been making images and telling stories for 40 years. His restless creativity has continually placed him at the forefront of new approaches to visual storytelling. Dedicated to documenting the social and political issues that define our times, a sensitive eye and an intimate and compassionate relationship to his subjects are signatures of his intense and unsparing work. As a member of VII Photo, Kashi has been recognized for his complex imagery and its compelling rendering of the human condition.
Kashi’s innovative approach to photography and filmmaking has produced a number of influential short films and earned recognition by the POYi Awards as 2015’s Multimedia Photographer of the Year. Kashi’s embrace of technology has led to creative social media projects for clients including National Geographic, The New Yorker, and MSNBC. From implementing a unique approach to photography and filmmaking in his 2006 Iraqi Kurdistan Flipbook, to paradigm shifting coverage of Hurricane Sandy for TIME in 2012, Kashi continues to create compelling imagery and engage with the world in new ways.
Along with numerous awards from World Press Photo, POYi, CommArts and American Photography, Kashi’s images have been published and exhibited worldwide. His editorial assignments and personal projects have generated fourteen books.
Richard Sharum
Richard Sharum is an editorial and documentary photographer based in upstate New York. Mainly focusing on socio-economic or social justice dilemmas concerning the human condition, his work has been regarded as in-depth, up-close and personal.
Selected exhibitions include Kyoto, Japan; Sao Paulo, Brazil; Reggio Emilia, Italy; New York, Boston, Chicago’ and Dallas. His work is in the permanent collection of the Witliff Center for Documentary Studies, Amon Carter Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art, and others.
Commissions include The Meadows Foundation, Centers for Community Cooperation, Harvard Law School, Student Conservation Association, Children's Medical Center (Oncology), Children's Cancer Fund.
Publications include those by LFI (Leica International), British Journal of Photography, LensCulture, The Atlantic, Texas Monthly, Publico (Portugal), El Pais (Spain), Observer (UK), The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian (UK), B+W Photo Magazine, Huck Magazine, Glasstire, PATRON, Creative Review, among others.
Richard Sharum's debut monograph Campesino Cuba was published in 2021 (GOST) and his latest, Spina Americana, was just released in November 2024 (GOST). Richard Sharum is represented by The Hulett Collection, Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Julie Winokur
Executive Director, Talking Eyes Media
Julie WinokurJulie Winokur, Executive Director of Talking Eyes Media, has been a storyteller for over two decades, first as a magazine writer and then as a documentary filmmaker. She launched Talking Eyes Media in 2002 as a way to create visual media that catalyzes positive social change. Her work has appeared on PBS, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, and National Geographic. Beyond broadcast and publication, Winokur works extensively with nonprofit organizations to develop their messages and put Talking Eyes' films to work at the grassroots level. She is the co-founder of Newest Americans, a storytelling project about immigration and identity based in Newark, New Jersey, that was named Best Online Storytelling Project in 2020 by Pictures of the Year International. She is also the producer/director of The Sacrifice Zone and Bring It to The Table, both documentary films with extensive impact campaigns. Winokur is a National Geographic Explorer and has been on the faculty of Rutgers University-Newark and the International Center of Photography in New York.
