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Ken Light

Adjunct Professor/Photo Director
510-642-4825  |   Send E-Mail

Ken Light is curator of the Center for Photography and freelance documentary photographer. He is author of 5 monographs, including “Texas Death Row,” “ Delta Time” and “To the Promised Land.” His latest book, "Witness In Our Time" will be published in Fall 2000. It is a text with 22 interviews of photographers working in this genre and looks at how photographers work, live and struggle to complete projects and get work into the world. His work has appeared in numerous magazines including, Rolling Stone, Granta, Time, Newsweek, Mother Jones, The National Journal, Speak, L'Internazionale and Camera Arts.

Ken Light's home page

Books:

Witness In Our Time
Witness In Our Time

Witness in Our Time traces the recent history of social documentary photography in the words of twenty-nine of the genre's best photographers, editors, and curators, showing how the profession remains vital, innovative, and committed to social change. The second edition includes a new section of interviews on documentary photography in the field and an exploration of the role of photojournalism in 21st-century media. Witness in Our Time provides an insider's view of a profession that continues to confront questions of art and truth while extending the definitions of both.

 
Texas Death Row
Texas Death Row

Ken Light and his camera were permitted unparalleled access to Texas Death Row. His stark, powerful images show where and how the condemned live. In the year he took these pictures, fourteen men were executed in Texas.

Suzanne Donovan's accompanying essay, "Shadow Figures: A Portrait of Life on the Row," draws upon her interviews with the condemned men and with prison authorities, family members, and members of victims' families

Whoever opens this book will want to look away, for the pictures and words force us to gaze intimately into the eye of death.

 
Coal Hollow
Coal Hollow

"America's coal industry remains a laboratory test for 'free market' capitalism and government's efforts to control it. The people who live in it, as captured here in words and pictures by Ken and Melanie Light, are obstinate, wounded, witty, profane, and definatly human." - John Sayles, Independent Filmmaker"

 
Delta Time
Delta Time

Light's duotones of Mississippi provides a strong blend of artistic talent and documentary photography, depicting black cotton workers and field laborers' homes in the rural Delta region. The ultimate result is to portray how little the poverty of the region has changed in the past three decades: his works are gripping, indeed. -- Midwest Book Review

 
With These Hands
With These Hands

"Ken Lights images of workers reveal a compassionate concern for people that places them in the tradition of the socially motivated photographs of Lewis Hine and Dorothea Lange." Walter Rosenblum & Naomi Rosenblum With an introduction by Cesar Chavez and text by Paula DiPerna.

 
To The Promised Land

To The Promised Land gives an intimate view of a situation of enormous and often tragic proportions. The photographic portraits and reportage of the long dangerous journey from Mexico to the United States in photographs and is supported by a brilliant essay by Richard Rodriquez. The images take us from rural Mexico to the U.S.-Mexican Border and finally to the communities of Southern California, where these undocumented immigrants try to create a new life.

 

Published Stories:

Creators Across America
Copyright Alliance
Copy right and You; Creators across America is a video program that features creators of media and other forms of intellectual property and how the © has protected their work
What Is The Power of A Photo
KALW 91.7 FM
What is the power of a photograph a conversations about polotics, arts and media with host Rose Agulair and Ken Light, Steve McCurry and Trevor Paglen
From Organizer To Photographer
Public Presentation
A public lecture at The Annenberg Space for Photography
Ken Light Talks About Sebastiao Salgado's Work
KQED-TV

Ken Light does a walk through of the images of Sebastiao Salgado on view at the Brower Center in Berkeley, California.

The Valley of Shadows
Newsweek.com
The Central Valleys fertile land supplies nearly half of all U.S. fruits, nuts and vegetables. But drought and neglect are leaving ghosts towns in its wake. A five part multi media presentation.
Coal Hollow
Digital Journalist: A Multimedia Magazine for Photojournalism

From: Digital Journalist: A Multimedia Magazine for Photojournalism: "Adjunct Professor Ken Light's black-and-white photography and Melanie Light's oral histories give us a documentary that goes far beyond the news to show the enduring damage coal mining has done to the people and environment of Appalachia. "

Tell It On the Mountain
Salon.com

For Salon.com, Sarah Karnasiewicz reviews a powerful new book of photos and oral histories by adjunct professor Ken Light documenting the ravaged lives of West Virginia's coal miners.

Other Works:

A story by UC Berkeley Media Relations about the three weeks Ken Light spent this summer working on his extended documentary project in West Virginia on the coal industry. Some of the photographs were on exhibit in the school's North Gate Gallery in April 2002.  Read more...

Ken Light, the director of UCB's Center for Photography, talks in detail about three of Sebastião Salgados photographs from the "Then and Now" exhibition at the David Brower Center, which runs May 14, 2009 through January 31, 2010. Produced by SPARK for This Week in Northern California.  Read more...

Courses Taught by Ken Light:

Fall 2011: Visual Storytelling: Advanced Documentary Projects-Blurb Book
Fall 2011: News Photography
Spring 2011: Visual Storytelling: Advanced Documentary Projects-Real Eyes Magazine
Spring 2011: Photo Essay
Spring 2011: MINI: The Journalist as Freelancer (7 Weeks)
Fall 2010: Visual Storytelling: Advanced Documentary Projects-Blurb Book
Fall 2010: News Photography
Spring 2010: MINI: The Journalist as Freelancer (7 Weeks)
Spring 2010: Photo Essay
Spring 2010: Master's Project Seminar
Fall 2009: News Photography
Fall 2009: Visual Storytelling: Advanced Documentary Projects-Blurb Book Photo Project
Fall 2009: Master's Project Seminar
Spring 2009: Photo Essay
Spring 2009: MINI: The Journalist as Freelancer (7 Weeks)
Spring 2009: Master's Project Seminar
Spring 2009: Visual Storytelling: Advanced Documentary Projects-Real Eyes Magazine
Fall 2008: Master's Project Seminar
Fall 2008: Visual Storytelling: Advanced Documentary Projects-Blurb Book Photo Project
Fall 2008: News Photography
Spring 2008: Master's Project Seminar
Spring 2008: Photo Essay
Spring 2008: Visual Storytelling: Advanced Documentary & Real Eyes Magazine
Fall 2007: Visual Storytelling/ Advanced Documentary Photography
Fall 2007: News Photography
Fall 2007: Master's Project Seminar
Spring 2007: News Photography
Spring 2007: Visual Storytelling: Advanced Documentary & Real Eyes Magazine
Spring 2007: Law and Ethics
Spring 2007: Master's Project Seminar
Fall 2006: News Photography
Fall 2006: Master's Project Seminar
Fall 2006: Visual Storytelling/ Advanced Documentary Photography
Spring 2006: News Photography
Spring 2006: Visual Storytelling/ Advanced Documentary Photography
Spring 2006: Master's Project Seminar
Fall 2005: News Photography
Fall 2005: Visual Storytelling: Communities in Transition
Fall 2005: Master's Project Seminar
Spring 2005: News Photography
Spring 2005: Visual Story Telling
Spring 2005: Master's Project Seminar
Spring 2002: News Photography
Spring 2002: Documentary Photography
Fall 2001: Master's Project Tutorial
Fall 2001: News Photography
Spring 2001: Master's Project Tutorial
Spring 2001: News Photography
Spring 2001: Advanced Documentary Photography
Fall 2000: Master's Project Tutorial
Fall 2000: News Photography
Fall 2000: Advanced Photography
Spring 2000: Master's Project Tutorial
Spring 2000: News Photography
Spring 2000: Documentary Photography
Fall 1999: News Photography
Fall 1999: Advanced Photography
Spring 1999: Advanced News Photography
Fall 2004: News Photography
Fall 2004: Master's Project Seminar
Fall 2004: Doc Photo: Still Images of A World In Motion
Spring 2004: News Photography
Spring 2004: Visual StoryTelling
Spring 2004: Master's Project Seminar
Fall 2003: News Photography
Fall 2003: Documentary Photography
Fall 2003: Master's Project Seminar
Spring 2003: Master's Project Seminar
Spring 2003: News Photography
Spring 2003: Visual StoryTelling
Fall 2002: Master's Project Tutorial
Fall 2002: News Photography
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Ken Light
Michael Pollan
Susan Rasky
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