New Picture Perfect Episode Featuring Photographer Christopher Anderson

We are excited to introduce a new episode of Picture Perfect with photographer Christopher Anderson. In this episode, we sit down with Anderson at his studio in Brooklyn to learn more about his past projects, including the life-changing assignment he took on for The New York Times Magazine in 1999. We then follow Anderson all over New York City as he captures the people and stories within the city in new and intimate ways as part of his work for New York Magazine.

Anderson is a member of Magnum Photos and internationally recognized for his emotionally charged photographs that cross the boundaries of documentary and art photography. Born in Kelowna, British Columbia Canada in 1970, Anderson grew up in Abilene, Texas, where his interest in photography grew after an early job out of university printing pictures for The Dallas Morning News. He gained recognition in 1999 when he boarded a handmade wooden boat with Haitian refugees to document their attempt to sail to America. The boat, named Believe In God, sank in the Caribbean. In 2000, the images from that harrowing journey received the Robert Capa Gold Medal.

Anderson is also known for his work as a war photographer. His images from Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and the conflict in Israel have also received international acclaim. In 2004, he traveled to Venezuela to document the self-described “revolution” of Hugo Chavez. The resulting book, Capitolio (RM 2009), was named one of the best photographic books of 2010 at the Kassels Photobook Festival, and has since been turned into a groundbreaking app for iPhone and iPad. In our exclusive bonus footage, Anderson gives us a tour of an exhibition of portraits of New York-based war photographers. He explains that he made the photographs on the weekend after Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros’ death in Libya and gives us a glimpse into this very tight community. The show opened as a benefit to RISC, an organization that was started by Sebastian Junger and whose aim is to make things safer for photographers and journalists on the front lines.

Anderson was one of the early members of the agency VII, formed by legendary photographers James Nachtwey and Antonin Kratochvil. He joined Magnum Photos in 2005. He has served as a contract photographer for Newsweek and National Geographic Magazine, and is currently the first ever “Photographer in Residence” at New York Magazine.