Bio
Ken Schles
Born: Brooklyn, New York. 1960.
Ken Schles photographs. He may talk and write about that experience as well. His books are considered 'intellectual milestones in photography' (Süddeutsche Zeitung). His most recent book, Oculus, is a “best” photobook of 2011 as selected by Photo-eye: “Oculus is an unusual and uniquely important book… Equal parts philosophical treatise and artist book, Oculus asks profound questions about how we find meaning in the world and how images give shape to memory and our lives. Viewers willing to spend time with this powerful work will be greatly rewarded." (Adam Bell) His previous book, A New History of Photography: The World Outside and the Pictures In Our Heads, was a finalist for the 2009 Rencontres d’Arles Photographie Contemporary Book Award. Vince Aletti in the New Yorker called his book Invisible City, 'hellishly brilliant.' Invisible City was also included in MoMA’s More Than One Photography exhibition as the sole representative of the printed photographic book, and listed in M+M Auer’s survey of important photographic books and including literature that presaged photography going back to 1760. It has influenced a generation of photographers and is a favorite of the photographer
Robert Frank. Books of his have appeared on notable lists published by Photo-Eye and the Sunday New York Times Book Review. His work is included in private and public collections such as MoMA, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Museum and The Art Institute of Chicago, among others.
Ken Schles is a NYFA Fellow and is an adjunct teacher at ICP.
Ken studied photography at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science
and Art with William Gedney, Len Jenshel and Larry Fink, and studied additionally with the artists Reuben Kadish, Hans Haacke and
Martha Rosler, graduating in 1982. He was also briefly a student of the legendary Lisette Model at the New
School for Social Research. Prior to his graduation he began working for Gilles Peress.
