2013 Infinity Award: Young Photographer

Kitra Cahana, who was born in Miami and raised in Canada and Sweden, is a documentary and fine art photographer whose work explores important social, anthropological, and spiritual themes. For her documentary projects, Cahana embeds herself in communities around the globe, often for years at a time, in order to learn the language of her subjects. She has chronicled the daily lives of teens at a Texas high school, told the story of a Venezuelan cult, followed a group of nomadic youth across the United States, bringing images to the covers of National Geographic and The New York Times. For her fine art photography, she focuses on the less explicable, often pushing the possibilities of the photographic medium. Her work in this genre deals with themes of the body and spirituality, a topic she took on following her father's stroke, which led him to become a quadriplegic. Cahana is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including a 2013 TED fellowship, a first prize for the 2010 World Press Photo, a scholarship at the Benetton research communication center in Italy, the Thomas Morgan internship at The New York Times, and many more. She earned an undergraduate degree in philosophy from McGill University and a master's in visual and media anthropology from the Freie Universitat in Berlin.