Jon Lowenstein has been a professional photographer for more than ten years. He specializes in long-term, in-depth documentary photographic projects which question the status quo. He believes that documentary photographers make a significant contribution to our society by serving as visual witnesses and historians. Most importantly, he loves people and photography. To those who say that photography is irrelevant he asks them to imagine a world without photography.
H was one of eight staff photographers for the CITY 2000 (Chicago In The Year 2000) project, during which time he started an ongoing project about Mexican Immigration to the United States. Recently, Lowenstein completed work on his first book, which explores the lives of developmentally disabled people in Illinois and is now working on several book projects. For the past three years he taught photography to middle-school students at Paul Revere Elementary School and helped publish “Our Streets†a community newspaper about the nearby South Side Chicago community which he is documenting.
He has won many awards, including a 2007 World Press Award, 2005 NPPA New America Award, a 2004 World Press photo prize, 2003 Nikon Sabbatical Grant, the 58th National Press Photographer’s Pictures of the Year Magazine Photographer of the Year Award and Fuji Community Awareness Award. He participated in the Open Society Institute’s Moving Walls VII Exhibition. He was a finalist for he W. Eugene Smith Memorial Award.
Lowenstein’s work has appeared in Mother Jones, Time, Smithsonian, US News and World Report, Fortune, Elle, The New York Times, Stern and Chicago Magazine, among others. Lowenstein attended the University of Iowa and has taught at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Western Kentucky’s Mountain Workshop and the Southern Short Course.
