About Jason Houston

Photographer and filmmaker Jason Houston has worked his entire career exploring how we live on the planet and with each other through environmental conservation, social justice, indigenous futures, and the diversity of human experience.

Jason Houston explores how we live on the planet and with each other through community, culture, and human experience. Jason has worked on projects in over 30 countries—many of them many times and often traveling abroad over 200 days a year—producing photojournalism, personal documentary, multimedia art, and short films. He embeds with the people he photographs and in their lives—often using various participatory methods—to produce stories that transcend outsiders’ preconceptions and assumptions, engaging the people he photographs as collaborators rather than ‘subjects’. Jason’s work brings to life authentic narratives that recognize sovereignty in communities; engage supporters, decision-makers, and the public; and inform conversations toward social and environmental change. His still images and short films have been recognized, published, exhibited, premiered and presented online, in print, and at venues worldwide.

Jason is a grateful alumnus of the Missouri Photo Workshop, a Senior Fellow in the International League of Conservation Photographers, a Fellow at Wake Forest University’s Center for Energy, Environment, and Sustainability, and the 2022 Environmental Peacemaking (EnPAx) Arts Fellow. His work has been published, exhibited, premiered, and presented around the world in outlets and venues ranging from The New York Times, Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, National Geographic, Smithsonian, Science Magazine, WWF, and The Nature Conservancy, to Mountainfilm, SxSW, Harvard, Yale, Duke, the New Mexico Museum of Art, UNESCO, San Francisco Art Institute, and USAID.

In addition to his still photography, Jason runs eight16creative, a cause-driven moving media production company focused on racial justice, Indigenous-centered voices, and the decolonization of humanity’s relationships with Earth and each other, with his life+creative partner Dewi Sungai Marquis-Houston.

As an advocate for Concerned Photography, Jason has presented, curated, run workshops, served on boards, and organized conference programming on working in cause-driven photography for dozens of arts and other institutions including Anderson Ranch, Duke University, Wake Forest University, Colorado Photographic Arts Center, Telluride Photo Festival, Wild & Scenic Film Festival, University of Colorado at Boulder, LensCulture, San Francisco Art Institute, Mountainfilm, EnPAx, and Blue Earth’s annual Collaborations for Cause conference.

For more than 8 years Jason also worked as Photo Editor for Orion magazine, an award-winning bimonthly periodical focused on people and nature, where he led assignments, story development, and art direction for photo essays, portfolios, features, and departments. He is a grateful alumnus of the Missouri Photo Workshop, a Senior Fellow in the International League of Conservation Photographers, a Fellow at Wake Forest University’s Sabin Center for Environment and Sustainability, the 2022 Environmental Peacemaking (EnPAx) Arts Fellow, and a contributing photographer at Redux.