Jon Lowenstein (born January 16, 1970) is an American documentary photographer, filmmaker, and visual artist. His work focuses on confronting the complex issues of wealth inequality, structural racism, and violence. His extensive body of work has been recognized and featured in exhibitions and museums internationally, as well as ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

,'' ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

,'' ''

NewsWeek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely ...

'' and on

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service ...

, a British public-service television broadcaster. He has also been a guest several times on

NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...

discussing issues of poverty and violence. He is a member and owner of

NOOR photo agency NOOR is an international photo agency and foundation owned and directed by the member photographers under a cooperative model. It is headquartered in Amsterdam, Netherlands, with photographers based worldwide. The agency is known for producing ...

, a cooperative photojournalist agency located in the

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

. He is widely known as the first person to do a documentary photography drop in Web3 in the summer of 2020.

Life and work

Lowenstein was born in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

, Massachusetts. He graduated from the University of Iowa with a BA in English and completed additional study towards a Master's Degree in Fine Arts from Columbia College as well as the Universidad del Pais Vasco in San Sebastian, Spain. He joined NOOR Images in 2008. His international work has included covering elections in

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...

, the aftermath of the

2010 Haiti earthquake A catastrophic magnitude 7.0 Mw earthquake struck Haiti at 16:53 local time (21:53 UTC) on Tuesday, 12 January 2010. The epicenter was near the town of Léogâne, Ouest department, approximately west of Port-au-Prince, Haiti's c ...

, and social violence in

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

and Central America.

Long term projects

Lowenstein has spent the past two decades engaged in two large-scale documentary projects—one focusing on his adopted community on Chicago's South Side and the other documenting the experience of undocumented Latin Americans coming to and living in the United States. ''South Side'' is a body of work encompassing photography, film, found ephemera, archival material and mixed-media art evoking a uniquely American time and place. Having lived on the South Side of Chicago for two decades, run a community newspaper and taught in neighborhood public schools, Lowenstein's project functions as a participatory media project seeking to engage both the immediate community and a larger audience. It is a collaborative effort challenging accepted notions of community, poverty, segregation, power, and hope.
The Daily Beast: Gang Violence and Crime in Chicago ''Shadow Lives USA'' follows the migrant trail from Central America, through Mexico and the United States in an effort to tell the stories of the men and women who make up the largest transnational migration in world history. Lowenstein has accompanied migrants on each part of their journey north, swimming the Rio Grande, crossing the border with them, and later documenting individual family lives in America. ''Shadow Lives'' is meant to spur dialogue around the immigrant experience, the dangers of border crossings, living undocumented in the United States, and deportation. James Estrin, writing in ''The New York Times,'' said "While Mr. Lowenstein is hardly the only photographer to cover Mexican and Central American migration, few have done it as comprehensively over such an extended period of time."

TED Talk

In July 2019, Lowenstein gave his first TEDSummit speech in Edinburgh, Scotland. In the speech, Lowenstein outlined his work for the past 20 years, expounding upon his career as a photographer. He showed his documentation of the migrant journey from Latin America to the United states, and gave insight to his decade-long project, "Shadow Lives USA". The project documents the "inner worlds of families escaping poverty and violence in Central America -- and pieces together the complex reasons people leave their homes in search of a better life". "Shadow Lives USA" will be released in 2020.

Awards

* 2019: TEDSummit 2019 Talk *2019: National Geographic Explorer Fellowship * 2014: Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize * 2014: TED Senior Fellow *2012: Open Society Foundation’s Audience Engagement Grant *2012: Hasselblad Master *2011: Guggenheim fellow in Photography for the South Side project. *2011: TED Global Fellow *2008: Joseph P. Albright Fellow by the Alicia Patterson Foundation *2007: Getty Images Grants for Editorial Photography *2007: World Press Award: Daily Life, 2nd Prize *2007: USC Annenberg Institute for Justice and Journalism Racial Justice Fellowship *2005: NPPA New America Award *2004: World Press Photo prize
World Press Photo Prize *2003: Nikon Sabbatical Grant *2000: 58th POYi Magazine Photographer of the Year Award, Fuji Community Awareness Award

References

BBC Channel 4

External links

His profile at Noor Photo Agency

Museum of Contemporary Photography

TED Fellows , Jon Lowenstein

Jon Lowenstein – John Simon Guggenheim Memorial FoundationTEDSummit 2019 Talk
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lowenstein, Jon American photographers Living people Artists from Boston 1970 births