Bio

Russell Frederick is a Brooklyn-born self taught visual activist of Afro-Panamanian heritage who has been photographing almost thirty years. He is best known for his visual narratives of the African diaspora. Especially the images of his hometown of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. His documentation of Bed Stuy started in 1999 after he took an intro to B&W photography class in 1997 at the International Center of Photography. After the first day of class Russell knew what he wanted to do for the rest of his life and he never looked back. At this time he was working in healthcare and in nursing school. A career as a nurse would be steady work but a career as a photographer had much more longterm value and fulfillment to Russell. His mission with his camera was to shift the negative perspectives some people had of humans of African descent and marginalized communities with positive images done with cultural nuance and humanity. Unable to attend photography school full time, Russell immersed himself in studying photography at book stores, critiquing album art at record shops and photographing voraciously in the late 90’s into the early 2000’s. Besides this, he was very fortunate to befriend some industry giants as he was aggressively pursuing photography to learn from them.

These angels served as mentors early in Mr. Frederick’s career to guide him. They were MAGNUM Photos & KAMOINGE photographer Eli Reed, criminal justice & street photographer Joseph Rodriguez and Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist Clarence Williams. The three photographers schooled him on the history, art, power, humanity & responsibility of photography. Mr. Frederick’s next layer of education was on the significance of editing & storytelling. He was blessed to receive expert tutelage from Fred Ritchin a former NYTimes Magazine photo editor, Fred Sweets, a Pulitzer Prize winning senior photo editor for the Associated Press and Vin Alabiso, a former VP of Photography & multi Pulitzer Prize winning photo editor for the Associated Press. All of these good people played a major role in Russell’s early development. However, Russell’s growth accelerated even further once he was introduced and welcomed into the legendary Harlem, NY based African American photography collective KAMOINGE in 2004. The original and second generation members took notice of Russell’s passion / commitment and decided to take him under their wings. Since that time, Frederick has been a recipient of grants from the Laundromat Create Change Project, the Innovation Fund, the Open Society Foundation, the U.S. Embassy of Ethiopia, the N.Y. Foundation of the Arts, the Brooklyn Arts Council, and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. Frederick has also been a beneficiary of awards from the Gordon Parks Foundation and he has been a finalists for grants & awards from the W. Eugene Smith Foundation (2022), the Magnum Foundation (2022), and the National Association of Black Journalists (2022).

Frederick has achieved a lot in his almost three decade career such as lecturing at NYU, the School of Visual Arts, the International Center of Photography, Columbia University, the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, Monroe College and other fine institutions. His work has been exhibited vastly in the United States, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia in galleries, museums and photo festivals such as ‘Photoville’ Brooklyn, NY, ‘Visa Pour L'image’ in Perpignan, France, the ‘Lodz photo festival’ in Lodz, Poland, the ‘On the Move’ photo festival in Cortona, Italy, the ‘Addis FotoFest’ in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the ‘Bamako Encounters Biennial’ in Bamako, Mali, the Shanghai Photo festival in Shanghai, China, the ‘Angkor Fotofest’ in Angkor, Cambodia and the Reportage photo festival in Sydney, Australia to name a few. Beyond his global exhibitions of Bedford Stuyvesant Mr. Frederick has collaborated, been featured or shot still photos for Oscar, Emmy, Sundance, NAACP Image Award and Pulitzer Prize winning directors and writers Spike Lee, Stacey Muhammad, Lisa Cortes, Thomas Allen Harris, Jessica Beshir and TaNehisi Coates’s HBO film ‘Between the World and Me.’ Lastly, Mr. Frederick’s work will appear in the Amazon Prime series 'HARLEM’ second season towards the end of 2022. In addition, Russell’s documentary work and photojournalism have been commissioned and published in the New York Times, the Washington Post,NBC Nightly News ‘Inspiring America’ with Lester Holt, PBS / WNET Group, BLIND Magazine, NPR, the BKReader, City & State Magazine, Bloomberg News, NBC News, Slate, the Daily Beast, the Undefeated, ESPN, SportsCenter, Andscape, AARP, Numero Homme Berlin, VICE, Medium, the Photo District News, the World Photography Organisation Magazine, Black Shutter, Ebony, the Root, Der Spiegel, New York Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Photography Collections Preservation Project, A Picture Gallery of the Soul book by Howard Oransky & Herman Milligan, Black: A Celebration of Culture by Dr. Deborah Willis, Timeless by the Kamoinge photographers, DandyLion: The Black Dandy & Street Style by Shantrelle P. Lewis, Brooklyn on my Mind by Dr. Myrrah Brown-Green and many more. Besides these film and publishing achievements, Mr. Frederick continues to diversify his portfolio by curating critically acclaimed exhibits ‘Power & Grace: the Black Woman and Breaking Point’ for the Kamoinge collective. He has also been a juror for Photoville Brooklyn, NY, the New York Foundation of the Arts Photography grant, FeatureShoot Magazine Emerging Photographers competition and  the Newburgh Community Photo Project fellowship.

Frederick has photographed notables such as President Barack Obama, President Bill Clinton, Mayor David Dinkins, fashion icon Dapper Dan, Grammy award winning musicians Anthony Hamilton, D’angelo, Jill Scott, Lauryn Hill, and Saunders Sermons of Tedeschi Trucks Blues band plus Oscar Award winning actors Ossie Davis & Ruby Dee, Regina King and Director Barry Jenkins to be brief. His personal work, shot largely in medium-format black & white film, has been exhibited by the Gordon Parks Museum in Fort Scott, Kansas, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the City Museum of NY, the Corcoran Gallery at George Washington University in D.C, the Brooklyn Museum, the International Center of Photography, the Aperture Foundation, the NoVo Foundation, the Hammonds House Museum in Atlanta, Georgia, the Silver Eye Center of Photography in Pittsburgh, Pa, The Reginald Lewis Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, the MOCADA Museum in Brooklyn, NY, the National Arts Club NY,NY, the RUSH ARTS Gallery,  the Higher Pictures Generation Gallery, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture Harlem, NY, the Weeksville Heritage Center Brooklyn, NY, the Bronx Documentary Center, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the BRIC Gallery, B&H Photo, Adorama Photo, the Brooklyn Public Library, the Musee National du Mali in Bamako, Mali and the Goethe Institute in Accra, Ghana to be brief. In addition to these accolades the United Nations Educational Science Cultural Organization commissioned Mr. Frederick in 2015 to conduct a series of photojournalism and documentary photography workshops to over two hundred and fifty men and women in Ethiopia and South Sudan. Based on the success of these workshops each year since 2016 at least two of Frederick’s students have flown to NYC to participate in the annual NYTimes Annual Portfolio Review for emerging photographers and several are working as full time photographers redefining the visual narratives of Africa.

Russell has also helped raise funds with his artwork for the National Association of Black Journalists and the Kamoinge-Ferman Scholarship at Columbia College in Chicago.  In 2021, Getty Images and Mr. Frederick signed a licensing agreement for the agency to distribute some of his archive to their 2 million subscribers. In addition to these vast accomplishments, Russell is very proud to announce his latest endeavor the Darkroom MC’S (short for Masters of Culture) with his creative & business partner Anderson Zaca. The duo is directing, producing & co-hosting a documentary series that will debut on the PBS network in the Spring of 2025. Lastly, Mr. Frederick’s photography has been acquired to the permanent collections of the Contemporary Museum of Photography in Chicago, the Musee National du Mali in Bamako, Mali, the NoVo Foundation, the Open Society Foundation, the Gordon Parks Museum, the Library of Congress, the Brooklyn Public Library, the Brooklyn Historical Society, the Jamel Shabazz collection, the Danny Simmons art collection and a diverse amount of private collectors. Lastly, Frederick is a proud member of Kamoinge Inc. since 2004 where he served as Vice President from 2016 - 2020 and he is a founding/board member of the Kings Against Violence Initiative in Brooklyn, NY where he has been mentoring young men since 2011.