If you’ve seen a recent copy of the Washington Post or New York Times, then you’ve probably also seen the incredible work of photographer Ilana Panich-Linsman ’02. The Texan-based photographer and her intimate style—which requires Ms. Panich-Linsman to gain an incredible amount of trust from her subjects—were profiled recently in American Photo’s One to Watch series.
Among Ms. Panich-Linsman’s long-term projects: “The Tree and the Apple,” a series on a young member of the beauty-pageant industry, “My Two Moms,” on a parenting partnership in rural New York; “Limbo,” on the the lives of Iraqi women refugees in Jordan; “Martha,” which chronicled the final weeks of a pancreatic-cancer patient in hospice.
Describing the long-term projects as both “empathetic” and “deriv[ing] much of its strength from its unflinching honesty,” the article quoted Ms. Panich-Linsman as saying she’s glad that her photography starts conversations.
“Some people think that I’m glamorizing [the pageant world] and others think I’m condemning it,” she told American Photo. “The goal of a photojournalist is to do neither, right? To be straightforward and tell the story in a visually interesting way. It’s like walking a tightrope: You don’t want to fall off in either direction.”