Carolyn Drake

Carolyn Drake was born in California. She studied Media/Culture and History in the 1990s at Brown University, where she became interested in the ways that history and reality are purposefully shaped and revised over time, and in the ways that artists can interrupt and shift these narratives. She worked for multimedia companies in New York after graduating from college, but left her office job at the age of 30 to engage with the physical world through photography. Between 2007 and 2013, Carolyn traveled frequently to Central Asia from her base in Istanbul to work on two projects which became acclaimed photo books. The first, Two Rivers, explores the connections between ecology, culture and political power along the Amu Dary and Syr Darya rivers. The second, Wild Pigeon, is an amalgam of photographs, drawings, and embroideries made in collaboration with Uyghurs in western China.
Carolyn returned to the US in 2014 and is now based in Vallejo, California. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, the Lange Taylor Prize, a Fulbright fellowship, the HCP fellowship, and the Anamorphosis prize, among other awards. She is an associate at Magnum Photos.