Jessica Lifland, Advisory Board member
Photographer
Jessica Brandi Lifland is a San Francisco-based photographer with 20 years of experience as a photojournalist working all over the United States and internationally in such places as Kosovo, Burma, Italy, the Middle East, and Africa. Her work has been published nationally and internationally in publications including The New York Times, USA Today, The Toronto Star, Newsweek, Time, Forbes and Le Monde. She is represented by Polaris Images Agency.
About 10 years ago Jessica expanded her repertoire to include wedding & family portrait photography and has taken on corporate and non-profit work as well. Some of her clients include Cisco Systems, Dolby, Adobe Systems, Contra Costa County, Fresno Community Medical Centers. Operation Smile, Tostan and the United Nations Office for Project Services, UNOPS. In all of her work, her style remains true to her documentary vision defined by her photojournalism career. She is an instructor of photojournalism at San Francisco City College and also teaches with Panasonic's Digital Photo Academy. She was also the founding director of San Francisco's popular monthly Photonight.
Prior to freelancing, Jessica held staff positions with the Evansville, Indiana Courier & Press and with The Contra Costa Newspaper Group. She earned a masters degree in photojournalism from Ohio University School of Visual Communications, a bachelors of fine arts in photography and bachelors in art history from Cornell University. She did internships at Long Island's Newsday, The Denver Post and the Daily Camera in Boulder. She is originally from Lawrence, New York. She has won numerous awards, and has been exhibited in group shows and in individual shows around the country. Her book projects include participation in the America 24/7 project; Extreme Digital Photography; Long Island: Our Story; The Great Divide; and We Do.
To stay true to her passion for pure reportage, lately Jessica has been working on a personal project documenting the lives of the cowboy poets of the American West. She has been the official photographer for the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering for the past 14 years.
Website: jessicalifland.smugmug.com