David Butow

California-based photojournalist David Butow began photographing as a teenager in the 1980’s in his home town of Dallas, Texas. Combining his interest in current events with his love of photography, his career as a photojournalist has taken him to dozens of countries including Afghanistan, Burma, Iraq, Israel and the Palestinian Territories, Peru, Yemen and Zimbabwe. His photographic coverage of subjects such as the 2011 Japanese tsunami, the 2008 China earthquake as well as social issues in the United States have won awards from World Press Photo, Communications Arts, American Photography Annual, Photo District News and others. His current project, Seeing Buddha has been published in the New York Times and National Geographic magazine and will be released as a book in 2016.

David’s primary interests are social issues and the effects of public policy at local and international levels. As a photographer working in the journalistic field, he hopes his craft contributes to an understanding of various peoples, their living conditions, cultural evolutions and the connections that exist between societies around the world. He tries to approach his coverage with as few pre-conceptions as possible, letting the personal experience of seeing and photographing a situation guide his viewpoint.

Since 2015 he has been leading the Zen Photography Workshop which fuses the traditions of clarity of mind with art to help those at all levels find heightened ways of seeing and communicating with the camera.

Butow’s photographs have been exhibited in various venues such at the Asia Society and United Nations in New York and Visa Pour L’Image in Perpignan, France. He is a member of Redux Pictures and has been a guest lecturer at many institutions including the Annenberg Space for Photography, Stanford University and Brooks Institute of Photography. His commercial and editorial clients have included National Geographic Books, Apple and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.