Witness in Our Time, Second Edition: Working Lives of Documentary Photographers

by Ken Light

Price: $21.95

ISBN 13: 1588342980

Available from the Following Retailers

Product Description

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.

Author Information

Ken Light
Ken Light is an internationally recognized documentary photographer and the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts photography fellowships. The author of seven photo books, including Delta Time, Texas Death Row, and Coal Hollow, he is a full-time faculty member and director of the Center for Photography at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.

Review Quotes

Excellent for a course on social documentary photography and a great read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the "mind's eye" of a documentary photographer. Light is in his own right an exceptional social documentary photographer, who has made an outstanding effort in compiling this wonderful collection.

—Choice

Photography can change the world. If you have any doubts, read this book. It will change your life

—Brian Wallis

Ken Light has managed to get very close to some of the greats in photography: Wayne Miller, Peter Magubane, Susan Meiselas, among others, and in the process created a document that is a guide for all young people who search of the truth.

—Danny Lyon

Seasoned pro, amateur, or fledgling photo-J school grad awash in the newest technologies, it's worth reading Ken Light's classic Witness in Our Time, which tells it like it is straight from the mouths of the best there ever were.

—Jeffrey D. Smith

For all of us who have complained about how tough things are in these times (and who among us has not complained?), the voices in this book remind us photojournalism and documentary photography were never easy, not even for those included in this book who are generally accepted as stars in the profession.

—Jim McNay