Stephen Ferry was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA in 1960. His father, David Ferry, is a poet and translator, and his mother, Anne Ferry, was a scholar of English literature. At the age of 12, Stephen began to hang around the Ferranti - Dege camera store and lab, where he learned to develop and print.
Since the late 1980s, Stephen has traveled to dozens of countries, covering social and political change, human rights, and the environment. A fluent Spanish speaker, Stephen has developed an understanding of Latin America from over 20 years of covering the region. Stephen's first book, I Am Rich Potosí: The Mountain that Eats Men (Monacelli Press, 1999) documents the lives of the Quechua tin miners of Potosí, Bolivia.
Stephen's work has won honors from World Press Photo, Picture of the Year, and Best of Photojournalism contests. He has also received grants from the National Geographic Expeditions Council, the Fund for Investigative Journalism, the Alicia Patterson Foundation, the Howard Chapnick Fund, the Knight International Press Fellowship, the Getty Images Grant for Good, the Open Society Institute, and the Magnum Foundation.
With support from the Tim Hetherington Grant awarded by the World Press Photo and Human Rights Watch, Stephen has just published Violentology: A Manual of the Colombian Conflict (Umbrage, 2012); and in Spanish, Violentología: Un manual del conflicto colombiano (Icono, 2012). At once photojournalism and historical record, Violentology witnesses Colombia's hidden internal war, and the struggle of civilians to resist violence and repression through peaceful means.
Stephen teaches documentary practice at the Foundation Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano in Cartagena, Colombia and at the International Center of Photography in NYC. He is represented by the Redux agency in NYC.
