Lori Grinker

"Grinker's camera uses the human body as the narrative device to tell of the horrors of war. She contrasts traditional backgrounds -- a yellow wall, green fields, a playground, a pool, blue sky -- settings that seem to be normal and everyday with people who have been direct participants or innocent bystanders in the ravages of war. Her eye is focused on how the human body pays the ultimate price for war with severed limbs, eyes, and legs that remain, after war, inert, useless, painful. Juxtaposed with the missing is the body that remains -- the other good leg, the eye which still sees, the spirit which despite the toll exacted by war, still continues to struggle and live in the face of continual exploitation and oppression. Herein lies the importance of Lori Grinker's work. We are asked to look at something which we for the most part see from a distance, which we hear about, but never have to confront. We are asked to look at our own humanity, and its inherent contradictions." - Deborah Willis-Kennedy

Lori Grinker attended Parsons School of Design. Her work has been featured in magazines, books and on television worldwide. Grinker’s work has been published in The New York Times, Stern, Rolling Stone, Geo, Natural History, and American Photography, among others. She has received grants and awards from the W. Eugene Smith Foundation, The Ernst Haas Award, the Hasselblad Foundation, the Puffin Foundation, NYFA, and the World Press Foundation. Grinker is the author of The Invisible Thread: A Portrait of Jewish American Women, and AFTERWAR: Veterans from a World in Conflict. Her photographs are in the collections of The Jewish Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts – Houston, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Israel Museum, and the International Center of Photography. Lori Grinker is a member of Contact Press Images.