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In this Episode…

This week Valerie shares a conversation with NYC documentary photographer Karen Marshall on the show. If you’ve been involved with ICP or Maine Media workshops, her name is most likely familiar to you. I invited Karen to discuss her special 30 year project titled Between Girls: A Passage to Womanhood.

Karen’s Biography

New York photographer Karen Marshall documents social issues. By focusing on the psychological lives of her subjects, she has worked on a series of visual stories that contemplate familial relationships and convey ideas about people and place within the cultural landscape.

Her seminal study, Between Girls: A Passage To Womanhood, articulates the coming of age of a group of urban middle class teenagers, following them from high school into adulthood 30 years later. Her interest in establishing new frameworks for the documentary genre has led Marshall to create an exhibition based on this project that uses traditional black and white photographs, book making, video and audio in conjunction with community programing.

In her documentary journey Marshall also has witnessed the struggling identity of a group of Navajo Indians and the demise of their earth-based culture in Caretakers of the Earth: Navajo Resistance and Relocation. She often directs her camera at family life, including her Pennsylvania Dutch in-laws’ clan in a series titled Pennsylvania In-Laws. In Still , Standing, a series begun in 2013, she explores the Polish landscape that her grandparents left behind when they emigrated to the United States in the early 1920's.

Marshall is the recipient of artist fellowships and sponsorships through the New York Foundation for the Arts, as well as grants and support from private foundations. Her photographs have been exhibited in the United States, the Philippines, British Columbia, Israel, Colombia, and China, and are part of several collections, including the Feminist Artbase at The Brooklyn Museum. Her images have appeared in publications in the United States, Europe, and Asia.

Her work as a freelance photographer spans many genres. Marshall’s distinctive style captures meaningful moments within a narrative frame. She has photographed for editorial, corporate, non-profit, and advertising clients for more than twenty-five years in Europe, South Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Marshall is an expert at visual storytelling with a thriving consulting business assisting photographers, foundations, and small companies in the creation of visual narratives.

Marshall is the Chair of the full time Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism Program at The International Center of Photography where she has been on the faculty for the past 20 years. She is an Associate Professor (Adjunct) at New York University, mentors MFA candidates at the Maine Media Workshops, and teaches independent workshops in the United States, China, Germany, Italy, and Columbia. Marshall who holds an MFA in New Media (Transart Institute/Donau Universitat Krems, Austria).