25 Under 25

Born: 29 November 1983, Houston, Texas

School: Princeton University, BA, 2006

First Camera: A Polaroid camera. I was really young and really excited about Polaroids (I still am).

Quote: In Photographing people I search for that liminal movement that slips underneath spoken words.

Born: 31 July 1980, New Haven, Connecticut

School: Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, BFA, 2003

First Camera: A toy wooden camera on my sixth birthday.  At age eight, I finally got my hands on a real camera, a disposable one on a keychain.

Quote: As I lay face down on the basement floor of the store I was working at, my hands tied behind my back and a gun to my hea, I was overcome by this indescribable wave that swept through me.  It told me that it wasn't my time to die, that I had not yet done what I was put on Earth to do.  From then on I have devoted my life to my art and followed this thing inside me that fought so hard that night to live.

Born: 23 April 1981, Moscow,Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

School: Tuffs University, BA, 2003; Massachusetts College of Art, MFA, 2007

First Camera: A red plastic point'and'shoot (in middle school).

Quote: A self-portrait assignment from my amazing photography teacher in high school launched my photography obsession.  Suddenly I felt more together in front of my own camera than behind it.

Born: 13 October 1981, Kume Island,Okinawa

School: City College of New York, BA, 2006

First Camera: At agetwenty I brought a Lomo LC-A while in Osaka, Japan.

Quote: I only photographed landscaped until "Strangers."  It was my first project to look at people, and to do so in such a personal manner.

Born: 5 November 1982, Oak Parks, Illinois

School: Savannah College of Art and Design, BFA, 2005

First Camera: I got my first camera my freshman year of high school- right after my family moved to Michigan.

Quote: I wasn't making many friends our first year in Michigan, so my Mom signed me up for a photography class.

Born: 17 November 1982, Washington, D.C.

School: University of Pennsylvania, 2004

First Camera: I was about seven years old.  It was pink.  I loved taking snapshots of my family and scenes from the windows of moving cars.

Quote: I've always seen photography as an artistic rather than a purely documentary medium; even as a child I wanted to capture light in images of snow, raindrops, and streetlamps.

Born: 25 March 1983, Sacramento, California

School: Maryland Institute College of Art, BA, 2005

First Camera: My mother brought me a point-and-shoot camera when I was eleven, but at eight I had already decided to be a photographer.

Quote: Stepping into other communities humbles me.  I  want my photographs to give people new ways to see others, to gain emotional insight and understanding.

Born: 19 December 1981, Pittsburgh,Pennsylvania

School: Edinboro University, BFA, 2004; Ohio University, MFA, 2008

First Camera: A 35mm point-and-shoot Ansco-for Christmas when I was twelve.

Quote: My family went to see The Phantom of the Opera in Toranto.  I was fifteen, and my father let me use his Minolta SLR.  Since then I've wanted to be a photographer.

Born: 30 May 1982, Grand Rapids, Michigan

School: Maryland Institute College of Art, BFA, 2004; University of Wales, Newport, MFA, 2007

First Camera: At thirteen, I started using my mother's old 35mm.

Quote: I have always been a "people watcher," and as soon as I learned photography, it became my ideal way to communicate; it is both a priority and an obsession. 

Born: 15 September 1982, New York, New York

School:  Amherst College, BA, 2004

First Camera: A Pentax K1000

Quote: I always took pictures, but I started to take my work seriously during my senior year in college while I was shooting the Chinatown project.

25 Under 25 presents a wide array of photographs reflecting the world as seen through young but sophisticated eyes—the devastation from Hurricane Katrina; the battle-weary soldiers and civilian casualties of the Iraq War; explicit explorations of sexuality; urban and suburban landscapes. These images, whether of people or of what people leave behind, show us that the human imprint is everywhere, moving, altering, desiring, aspiring to permanence.