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 York Times, NewsWeek and on Channel 4, a British public-service television broadcaster. He has also been a guest several times on NPR discussing issues of poverty and violence. He is a member and owner of NOOR photo agency, a cooperative photojournalist agency located in the Netherlands. 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, 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, the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, and social violence in Mexico 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. 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, Lange Taylor Prize 2014: TED Senior Fellow, Ted Senior Fellow: Jon Lowenstein 2012: Open Society Foundation’s Audience Engagement Grant, Audience Engagement Grant 2012: Hasselblad Master 2011: Guggenheim fellow in Photography for the South Side project., Guggenheim Fellow in Photography: Jon Lowenstein 2011: TED Global Fellow, TED Global Fellow: Jon Lowenstein 2008: Joseph P. Albright Fellow by the Alicia Patterson Foundation 2007: Getty Images Grants for Editorial Photography, Getty Images Grant for Editorial Photography 2007: World Press Award: Daily Life, 2nd Prize, World Press Photo Award 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 Foundation TEDSummit 2019 Talk