Images by Katie DelaVaughn

For the past ten years Katie DelaVaughn has worked as an educator and photographer. Her two passions united on the Mexican border while studying Spanish and sociology and serving as the Tijuana Outreach Project Coordinator at the University of San Diego. There she began to document life on the border with her camera. She has been linking service and education with photography ever since as a literacy and art teacher to youth in California, Mexico, the Bronx, and as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nicaragua. After obtaining a graduate certificate in Documentary Photography, she collaborated with a research analyst and the Trans-Border Institute to document the conditions of indigenous women and children in Oaxaca, Mexico whose primary providers migrated to the US.

She has received several grants linking photography and education and is the founder and director of Pedagogy of Photography (POP), a program designed for youth to increase their literacy skills through photography. Their collaborative images have been widely exhibited in the communities where the photographs were taken. In May 2008, she completed a Peace Corps Fellowship and masters program at Teachers College, Columbia University, focusing on the benefits of literacy through photography for bilingual and bicultural youth.

Her personal style coalesces documentary, photojournalism and fine art photography, inviting the viewer to interact with the images and inquire about the experiences of the individuals within the photographs.