“I received it exactly when we got here” photographer Ed Kashi tells about getting a copy of his new book while staying in a house in Clarksville, Mississippi. The photographer is currently in the south of the United States working on a separate multiyear book project with his wife, Julie Winokur. “Honestly, I couldn’t look at it at first. I pulled it out of the wrap, and it was like when your kid comes and you say ‘Okay, great. It has 10 toes and 10 fingers.’ Then I put it down. Four days later, when we were getting ready to go to sleep, I grabbed it and started looking at it.”
Ed Kashi is full of energy in this conversation about his life, career, and his current projects. He even takes being interrupted by the house’s cat in stride. He comes across younger than his 67 years. “For me, it’s monumental,” Kashi continues. “I hope I have a lot of time left. There is also something weird about it. But maybe weird is not the right word. It’s a reality check. This isn’t meant to be a final statement, but it’s an interesting moment.”
It’s not hard to understand what he means when one sees the book. A Period in Time: Looking Back while Moving Forward: 1977–2022 could be seen as a retrospective edition in every sense. Through 200 photographs, it chronicles 45 years of his career that led him in every part of the globe.
Kashi’s work has always stood out for how he searches for social stories that are under-reported or overlooked completely, and how he looks at people in personal ways. His commitment to going as in-depth as possible over extended periods of time has also always drawn many photographers to his work. Most of the visual stories and images in the book span years, or in some cases decades, a commitment to a story that is hard to do in this day and age.
A good example of this work ethic is his series titled “In the Hot Zones: Investigating CKDnT,” which was recently acquired by the Library of Congress. Like so many of Kashi’s investigations, this one also operates on many levels to tell a complex and deep story, with in this case environmental justice, human rights, and climate crisis reporting. Only by tying all these angles together, which is impossible with short form photojournalism, can the story truly be told and shown.
CKDnT stands for “Chronic Kidney Disease of Nontraditional Causes.” The disease wreaks havoc in areas where extreme heat, hard labor, poverty, and poor labor protections thrive, from sugarcane fields in Central America to construction sites in the Middle East. It has claimed tens of thousands of lives.
“A really important aspect is what I call advocacy journalism. And increasingly, I see myself more in that role. It’s not that I can’t be an objective photojournalist and all that, but there are just certain issues where it’s like there aren’t two sides,” says Ed Kashi. “It is not okay that people who work in the Equatorial band of the Earth, who are generally poor agricultural workers, are getting sick and dying from this disease because they’re not being given enough hydration, they’re not given enough rest and shade.”
This dedication and drive has always been part of Kashi’s way of working. The book starts in 1977, when Kashi’s career began after he graduated and moved to San Francisco. He was working for magazines like TIME, Newsweek, Fortune and Business Week, covering the Silicon Valley. By the late 1980s he would be doing 15 magazine assignments per week. By every measure he had made it and was a successful photographer.
“I woke up one day and I was like ‘This isn’t why I wanted to be a photographer,’ Kashi recalls. “I wanted to be Robert Frank or Eugene Smith. I wanted to be in the great tradition of photojournalism and documentary photography.”
That part began when he was contacted by his friend Andrew Ross in San Francisco and worked for the San Francisco Examiner. Ross invited Kashi to work on a series in Northern Ireland for the 20th Anniversary of the Troubles. That original assignment trip was for 10 days. Kashi continued to go back for 3 years.
From that beginning, Kashi traveled the world. The book contains work from Berlin, Ukraine, Cairo, Vietnam, Syria, Lebanon, Pakistan, Iraq, Nigeria, India and Nicaragua among other far-flung places. But Kashi has also covered social issues in the United States. The visual stories range from documenting the lives of the Kurdish people for 14 years, to an 8-year project looking at what it means to age in America, to 2 years photographing the oil fields in the Niger Delta.
Accompanying the photographs in the book are emails and notes that Kashi exchanged with his wife while he was away working on the various projects. These notes show what Kashi saw in the field, providing a very personal look at what he was working on, what was going on in his head, as well as a glimpse into his relationship with his wife, to whom he has been married since 1994.
“Photography is a kind of diplomatic passport to worlds unseen, unveiling issues that need illumination, documenting history in the making, and capturing the human experience and the many awe-inspiring places in our fragile world,” Kashi writes in his introduction to the book. “I’ve witnessed too many powerful moments to recount them all. This book is a testimony to some of the most important stories I was motivated to pursue and dedicate myself to. My life has been shaped by these stories, the people I had the privilege to observe and learn from, and the places and narratives that have shaped who I’ve become.”
Photojournalism has changed a lot since Kashi began his career. AI has advanced, trust in journalism and journalists has dropped, and the number of outlets showing long form photography stories have diminished. “We need to get through the current era that we’re in because we are dealing with someone who, unfortunately, is so brilliant at manipulating the media, both the traditional media and social media. There is so much dissonance and noise and misinformation, and then you pile on Fox News and OAN and all the news mix, Joe Rogan, all this media sphere, info sphere, where we’re being bombarded. ‘Don’t believe in this and that.’ But underneath that, there are a lot of people who still want information. They still want stories,” Kashi ponders. “But I do feel that information and storytelling and journalism are central to being a reality check against those, what I consider the worst angels, that are currently holding power and pushing a lot of these initiatives. I take heart.”
A Period of Time: Looking Back while Moving Forward, 1977-2022 is published by the Briscoe Center for American History, distributed by the University of Texas Press, and available here.
