About

Contact Isadora:
isadorakosofsky@gmail.com

Isadora Kosofsky is a documentary photographer and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. She began photographing at the age of fourteen, documenting individuals in hospice care. Isadora often takes an immersive approach to visual storytelling, spending months and years embedded in the lives of the people she shadows. For her, the relationships formed with the people she photographs are tantamount to the image-making. She works on a range of subject matters through the lens of one individual or group of people. She has documented healthcare, aging, mental health, disability rights, the impacts of incarceration, substance use, gender violence, childhood trauma, and experiences of grief, loss, and resilience.

She is a National Geographic Photographer and has contributed to the New York Times, TIME, the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Stern, Le Monde, M le Magazine du Monde, GEO Germany, Paris Match, The London Sunday Times, The Guardian, Slate, Internazionale, and others. She is a recipient of a 2018 Grant from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting for her ongoing work on women identified survivors of complex trauma. In 2019, The Royal Photo Society named her one of a hundred “heroines” in photography worldwide. Isadora is a TED Fellow, part of a network of 450 global change makers, and gave a talk at TED 2018 in Vancouver. 

She was the recipient of the 2012 Inge Morath Award from the Magnum Foundation for her multi-series work on the aged. She was nominated for a 2016 Lead Award (German Pulitzer) for her long-term documentary about a senior citizen love triangle. She was a participant in the 2014 Joop Swart Masterclass of World Press Photo. Her work has received distinctions from Flash Forward Magenta Foundation, Ian Parry Foundation, Social Documentary Network, International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Women in Photography International, Prix de la Photographie Paris, The New York Photo Festival and others. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and can be found in Family Photography Now (Thames and Hudson, 2016), a photographic anthology, and in Public Private Portraiture from Mossless.

She had an exhibition of her work on youth facing incarceration and their families at the 2017 Visa Pour L’Image International Festival of Photojournalism in Perpignan, France. She is the recipient of a 2017 Getty Images Instagram Grant for elevating the stories of marginalized communities. Her storytelling has also been used for public policy, doubling the budget of a program to connect children with their incarcerated parent; her work has been used as evidence for the need for additional rights for women in prison through the Dignity for Incarcerated Women Act, a congressional bill. 

In addition, she has guest lectured at CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, The School of Visual Arts, Art Center College of Design, Ohio University School of Visual Communications, Loyola Marymount University Department of Journalism, the National Conference on Crime and Delinquency, and the National Geographic Photography Seminar in Washington D.C. She has taught workshops for high school students on topics related to the language of empathy, working intimately with subjects, and trauma studies. She was a 2020 Gwen Ifill Mentor through the International Women’s Media Foundation. She holds a B.A. in Gender Studies and Film from the University of California Los Angeles.

Her first monograph, Senior Love Triangle, was published by Kehrer Verlag in 2020. She co-wrote and produced a narrative feature film based on Senior Love Triangle, starring Tom Bower, which is distributed by Gravitas Ventures.