222 - Natalie Keyssar

A Small Voice: Conversations With Photographers

Natalie Keyssar is a documentary photographer based in Brooklyn, New York. Her work focuses on the personal effects of political turmoil and conflict, youth culture, and migration. She has a BFA in Painting and Illustration from The Pratt Institute. Natalie has contributed to publications such as The New York Times Magazine, Time, Bloomberg Business Week, National Geographic and The New Yorker, and been awarded by organizations including the Philip Jones Griffith Award, the Aaron Siskind Foundation, PDN 30, Magenta Flash Forward, and American Photography. She has taught New Media at the International Center of Photography in New York, and has instructed at various workshops across the US and Latin America with organizations such as Foundry, Women Photograph, The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, and the IWMF. Her work has been supported by The Pulitzer Center, The Magnum Foundation, The National Geographic Society, and the IWMF among many others, and she is the winner of the 2018 ICP Infinity Emerging Photographer Award, the 2019 PH Museum Women Photographer's Grant, and is a winner of the 2023 Aperture Creator Labs Photo Fund. She is a Canon Explorer of Light and Co-Founder of the NDA Workshops series with Daniella Zalcman. She speaks fluent Spanish and is available for assignments internationally, as well as teaching and speaking engagements.

In episode 222, Natalie discusses, among other things:

• The conflict in Gaza
• How the internet and social media is clumsily creating a hive mind
• Her Jewish identity and how it shapes her perspective
• Her Ukrainian roots and covering the war in Ukraine
• Wanting her work to tell you what it feels like
• Her first trip to Venezuela and how it was love at first sight

Referenced:

• Daniella Zalcman
• Anastasia Taylor Lind
• Yelena Yemchuk
• Ben Makuch
• Stephanie Sinclair
• Christina Piaia
• Scout Tufankjian
• Katie Orlinsky
• Amie Ferris-Rotman
• Carlos Rawlins
• Ana Maria Arevalo
• Andrea Hernandez Briceño
• Lexi Grace Parra
• IWMF

Website | Instagram

“There’s this psychological cocktail of rage and grief and desire to act, and since I don’t have any actual useful skills, I’m not a doctor or psychologist or aid worker or fighter, or any of the things I sometimes wish I was, I felt the need to do something. And then there is also a totally selfish need to see it for myself. It feels compulsive. And not like in ‘this is my calling and I’m gonna save the world’, but like it’s compulsive enough to make you get on a plane to go to a country that’s quite dangerous and in horrific turmoil. ”

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