Ken Light

Kenneth Randall Light (born 1951) is an American social documentary photographer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is the author of twelve monographs, including Midnight La Frontera, What's Going On? 1969-1974, Delta Time, Texas Death Row and, most recently, Course of the Empire, published by Steidl. He wrote Witness in our Time: Working Lives of Documentary Photographers, a collection of recollections and interviews with 29 of the world's most well-known photographers, editors and curators of the genre. He has had his photographs included as part of photo essays and portfolios in newspapers, magazines and other media, has been exhibited worldwide and is part of museum collections such as SF Museum of Modern Art and International Center of Photography. Light was also a co-founder of Fotovision, the Mother Jones International Fund for Documentary Photography and he is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and three National Endowment for the Arts photography fellowships. He is also a professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley where he holds the Reva and David Logan chair in photojournalism and he is the director of the school's Logan documentary photography gallery.

Kenneth Baker, the San Francisco Chronicle'''s art critic, described his black-and-white imagery as placing his work in the lineage of Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and Robert Frank.

Early life Light was born in 1951 in the Bronx, New York City, in the United States of America. He would later move with his parents to East Meadow, on Long Island in New York.

Career Light started shooting film photography when he was 18 years old while studying government and sociology at Ohio University (1969-1973). Having access to his father's camera, he documented important events such as Richard Nixon’s campaign in Ohio, the moratorium to end the Vietnam War in Washington DC and the Cambodia invasion protests on his campus. The photographs from this last event were the ones that caused his first break in journalism. Even though he was arrested that day because of his association with the "Underground Press", his film came back to his hands; he sent it to New York and it was published around the world.

After he graduated in 1973, Light moved to California and he has been a freelance photographer focusing on social issues in America for more than 50 years (as of 2020). He has also been teaching photojournalism at the Graduate School of Journalism of the University of California Berkeley since 1983. He was the first photographer to become a Laventhol Visiting Professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and is a Guggenheim Fellow (2021).

Light spent five years photographic scenes in California's Great Central Valley, documenting the mix of poverty and wealth. He published photographs from this period, with commentary, in Valley of Shadows and Dreams (2012).

In 2014 Light launched a Kickstarter campaign to self-publish What’s Going On: America 1969-1974.

Publications Books In the Fields (1982). Published by Harvest Press. Introduction by Paul Taylor (Dorothea Lange's husband). With These Hands. (1986) Published by Pilgrim Press. Introduction by César Chávez. To The Promised Land. (1988) Published by Aperture. Introduction by Richard Rodriguez Witness in our Time: Working Lives of Documentary Photographers (2005) - Editor. Published by the Smithsonian Institution Press. Words of Mary Ellen Mark, Sebastião Salgado and Eugene Richards and others. in New York City 2008-2009: Coal Hollow at Smith College Art Museum 2011-2013: Picturing Modernity exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art - What's Going On? 2012: Valley of Shadows & Dreams at Oakland Museum of California 2017: Dorothea Lange: Politics of Seeing at Oakland Museum of California 2017: Resistors: 50 Years of Social Movement. Photography curated by Ken and Melanie Light. Berkeley Art Center

Curated exhibitions These are exhibitions of the work of others, of which Light was the curator or co-curator. 2017: Resistors: 50 Years of Social Movement Photography, Berkeley Art Center.

Awards and grants

Awards 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship 1992: Judges Special Recognition (Cannon Photo Essayist) in the Annual University of Missouri/NPPA Pictures of the Year competition 2012: Valley of Shadows & Dreams received the California Book Award -gold medal- for "Contribution to Publishing" by the California Commonwealth Club 2015: What's going on? - POY award Best Photography Book - Judges' Special Recognition, Ken Light, Light Squared Media (Light2 Media)'',

Grants 1973: International Fund for Concerned Photography 1975: The California Arts Commission, Artist in Communities 1978,1982: The Film Fund (w/LOHP-U.C. Berkeley) 1980 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Photographers Fellowship 1980 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Survey Grant 1982 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Photographers Fellowship 1983, 1985, 1995, 2003: The Max and Anna Levinson Foundation 1985: The Rosenberg Foundation (w/National Farm worker Migrant Ministry) 1994: Erna and Victor Hasselblad Foundation 2000: Puffin Foundation 2005: The Open Society Institute 2017: Jonathan Logan Family Foundation