BIO

Photo: Bettina M. Chavez

Rick Nahmias is a photographer, writer, and filmmaker whose work has been shown across North America, Europe, and Asia. He creates special multi-media image-based projects of all sizes for foundations, non-profits, corporations and cause-driven organizations. He also shoots freelance assignments with an emphasis on editorial, travel, medical and food subjects.

He is best known for documenting the lives and struggles of numerous marginalized communities. His acclaimed body of work exploring California's agricultural workforce "The Migrant Project: Contemporary California Farm Workers," became a traveling photography and bilingual text exhibition which has toured over three dozen museums, universities, and cultural centers across the country, and was published in 2008 by University of New Mexico Press. In addition, Nahmias also teaches workshops and speaks publicly to audiences ranging from school children, to colleges and professional development organizations.

His images and writing have been profiled and published in national newspapers, magazines, journals and news weeklies such as The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle and The San Diego Tribune. His work has been presented on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, is part of the permanent collection of the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian, and resides in several private and public collections across the country.

His work has been funded by organizations such as The Durfee Foundation, The Columbia Foundation and The Pew Charitable Trusts. As an Artist-in-Residence with LA Theatre Works and Facing History & Ourselves he has created and taught photo-essay workshops on social justice and environmental issues. In recognition of "The Migrant Project," he was awarded a U.S. Congressional Citation, and the inaugural Jason K. Stern Scholarship by the Julia Dean Photo Workshops in Los Angeles. In recognition of his short film, "A Fate Foretold," he was honored by Kodak as one of six up-and-coming filmmakers at the Sundance Film Festival.

His project, "Golden States of Grace: Prayers of the Disinherited," a photographic, text and audio exhibit which documents eleven marginalized communities at prayer will also be published by University of New Mexico Press (2010.) His multimedia exhibition “Last Days of the Four Seasons,” which tells the story of the final years of the last Catskill Mountains bungalow colony for Holocaust survivors through images, voices, sound and installation elements will have its premiere in fall of 2010 at the Jewish Museum of Florida in Miami. A graduate of New York University and member of the American Society of Media Photographers and the Writers Guild of America, he lives in Los Angeles.