Kamal Badhey (she/her) is a photographer, artist-educator and independent curriculum designer of South Asian ancestry with an MA in Photography and Urban Cultures from Goldsmiths, University of London, and an MS in Museum Education from Bank Street College. She is a member of the Urban Photographers Association and South Asian Women’s Creative Collective. Her work intersects with diaspora, using photography, oral storytelling, and family history to stitch together stories. It follows the Telugu saying, ’Katha kanchiki, manam intiki’, ‘The story goes far far away, and now we are back in our homes’. Her project “Portals and Passageways”, exhibited internationally traces her jeweler ancestor and great great grandfather Annam Rathnaiah from unknown origins to a former British colonial bazaar in Secunderabad, India. Kamal brings two decades of experience collaborating with youth and adults in public schools, transitional housing, community centers, civic engagement, and universities. She was a Lewis Hine Documentary Fellow and a Claremont Documentary Fellow.

For more of her work: www.kamalbadhey.com

Gail Buckland is an author, educator, curator and authority on photography. She is the author or collaborator on sixteen books of photography and history.

A graduate of the University of Rochester, Buckland is a Distinguished Visiting Professor at The Cooper Union, New York City. In 1991 she held the Nobel Chair in Art and Cultural History at Sarah Lawrence College. She has also taught at Columbia College, Chicago and Pratt Institute, Brooklyn.

The Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain, where Buckland served as curator in the 1970s, awarded Professor Buckland their prestigious J. Dudley Johnston Award for “major achievement in photographic criticism or history” and “sustained excellence.” While living and working in England, Buckland organized many exhibitions at the Royal Photographic Society and assisted in organizing the groundbreaking 1972 exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, “From Today Painting is Dead”.

Two of Gail Buckland’s earliest books are “Reality Recorded: Early Documentary Photography” and the one she co-authored with Cecil Beaton, “The Magic Image: The Genius of Photography from 1839 to the Present”. Other exhibitions and books include “Fox Talbot and the Invention of Photography” at the Pierpont Morgan Library; “Cecil Beaton War Photographs” at the Imperial War Museum, London; “Shots in the Dark: True Crime Pictures” at the Chelsea Art Museum; and “Who Shot Rock and Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present” and “Who Shot Sports: A Photographic History 1843 to the Present”, both organized by the Brooklyn Museum and published by Knopf.

The best-selling “The American Century” by Harold Evans (in which she was a collaborator along with author and historian Kevin Baker)contains more than 900 exceptional photographs. She again worked with Harold Evans and David Lefer on their book and WGBH television series, “They Made America From the Steam Engine to the Search Engine: Two Hundred Years of Innovators”.

To mark the 50th anniversary of American Heritage magazine in 2004, the editors selected Gail Buckland, above all other writers and historians of photography, to choose the “Ten Most Indispensable Photographs” in American history.

Al and Tipper Gore invited Gail Buckland and Katy Homans to work with them a photographic book, “The Spirit of Family”, depicting the changing face of the American family.

Gail Buckland served as photographic consultant to former Vice-President Al Gore on his PowerPoint presentation, documentary and book “An Inconvenient Truth”.

Mike Davis is an independent visual consultant, editor and educator who works with photographers around the world to elevate their visual storytelling. Mike has been a picture editor and visual leader at National Geographic magazine, The White House, several of America’s leading newspapers and most recently directed The Alexia Grants and taught visual storytelling classes at Syracuse University as an endowed faculty member.

Mike was twice named newspaper picture editor of the year and edited the work of several photographers of the year. He has been a picture editor for more than 40 photo books, taught many workshops and judged scores of competitions.

Ron Haviv is an Emmy nominated and award-winning photojournalist, film director, and co-founder of the photo agency VII, dedicated to documenting conflict and raising about human rights issues around the globe.

Haviv has produced an unflinching record of the injustices of war and his photography has had singular impact. His work in the Balkans, which spanned over a decade of conflict, was used as evidence to indict and convict war criminals at the international tribunal in The Hague. President George H.W. Bush cited Haviv’s chilling photographs documenting paramilitary violence in Panama as one of the reasons for the 1989 American intervention.

His first photography book, “Blood and Honey: A Balkan War Journal”, was called “One of the best nonfiction books of the year,” by The Los Angeles Times and “A chilling but vastly important record of a people’s suffering,” by Newsweek. His other monographs are “Afghanistan: The Road to Kabul”, “Haiti: 12 January 2010” and “The Lost Rolls” described by The Washington Post as “ The magical photos recovered from over 200 lost rolls of film… An odd family photo album in which the kin are the people and places that have defined global politics and culture in the past quarter century.” As a result Haviv created the national public archive, “Lost Rolls America”, preserving memories and images from previously undeveloped rolls of exposed film from the American public.

Haviv co-created and managed multi-platform projects for Doctors Without Borders’ “DR Congo: The Forgotten War” and “Starved for Attention”, UNICEF’s “Child Alert for Darfur and Sri Lanka” and the International Committee of the Red Cross’s “World at War”.

Haviv is the central character in six documentary films, including National Geographic Explorer’s Freelance in a World of Risk. He has provided expert analysis and commentary on ABC News, BBC, CNN, NPR, MSNBC, NBC News, GMA and The Charlie Rose Show and written Op-Eds for The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Haviv is the co-founder and director of The VII Foundation. He is currently co-directing two documentary films, Biography of a Photo and Picasso of Harlem.

Dr. Lauren Walsh teaches at The New School and New York University, where she is the Director of the Gallatin Photojournalism Lab. She is also the Director of Lost Rolls America, a national archive of photography and memory. Her recent book, Conversations on Conflict Photography, is a powerful exploration of the visual documentation of war and humanitarian crisis, and her forthcoming title is Through the Lens: The Pandemic and Black Lives Matter. Her other books include: Shadow of Memory (co-author); The Millennium Villages Project (co-editor); Macondo: Memories of the Colombian Conflict (editor); and The Future of Text and Image: Collected Essays on Literary and Visual Conjunctures (co-editor).

She has published widely in mainstream media as well as academic journals and anthologies. In addition to her appearances on CNN, NPR, and BBC, Walsh has appeared as an expert on photography in podcasts and documentary films. She is the co-director of Biography of a Photo, an in-progress documentary about two iconic photographs of conflict.

Walsh is interested in the politics and ethics of photography, and questions of historical memory and visual media. She focuses particularly on photojournalism, with a specialty in conflict photography and peace journalism. Walsh was awarded the Excellence in Teaching Award from NYU.