Some photographers chase beautiful light. Ari Espay chases people. Across 40+ countries, presidential sittings, global ad campaigns, and grassroots workshops in Myanmar and Laos, the throughline in his work has stayed remarkably consistent: humanity, always humanity.
Espay split his early career between fine art photography school in Chile and a National Geographic grant that put him shoulder to shoulder with legends like David Alan Harvey, Ed Kashi, Bob Sacha, Ira Block, and Maggie Steber. What he took from those years wasn’t a set of techniques — it was a philosophy. “Photography, if you really want to do it, is a job. It’s work,” he says. Not something you carry like a hobby, but something you have to keep pushing toward.
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Preparation Is the Whole Game
One story from his mentors stuck with him more than any technical lesson: David Alan Harvey once told him that walking into a National Geographic pitch meeting, he needed to be the foremost expert in the room on his own subject — because he’d be the one fielding every hard question. For Espay, that idea extends into every kind of shoot, from a two-minute presidential sitting to a years-long documentary project. Know the subject. Know your own reasons for shooting it. Ask yourself why before you ever ask to take the picture.
That preparation isn’t just intellectual — it’s physical. Studying under Maggie Steber, Espay was once sent to a location and told not to shoot for the first three days. Just walk, watch the light, and start talking to people. It taught him a word that reshaped how he works: serendipity. Once he stopped chasing the shot and started building real connection, people began inviting him places he never could have accessed with a camera raised on day one.
Backgrounds, Trust, and the “Visual Problem Solver”
Espay credits Ed Kashi with a line that still guides his eye on the street: photographers are visual problem solvers. It’s easy to get so locked onto a compelling face that the background gets ignored — until you’re home reviewing files and realize something in the frame is fighting your subject. Espay now composes from background to foreground, treating the environment as part of the story, not scenery behind it.
That same instinct for reading a scene extends to people. Early in his career, rejection on the street felt personal. Experience taught him otherwise — a “no” is rarely about the photographer, and almost always about something happening in a stranger’s life that has nothing to do with the camera. His approach now is simple: be honest about why you’re drawn to someone, and let that honesty do the work of building trust, whether you have three days or thirty seconds.
From the Street to the Studio — and Everywhere In Between
Espay has photographed Chilean presidents and Broadway performers with the same underlying goal he brings to a stranger on the sidewalk: find the human-to-human click before worrying about the photograph. In high-protocol studio settings, where a subject may only give him two or three minutes, he minimizes the crowd around the set and tries to create an intimate, conversational space — because, as he puts it, the work of a portrait happens on both sides of the camera, not just behind the lens.
Photographing Vulnerability: The Faces of EB
That philosophy is tested most directly in Espay’s long-running work with the Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB) community — families living with a rare, incurable skin disorder that causes extreme fragility to friction and trauma. Access to that kind of vulnerability, he says, is only possible through sustained trust. Families who’ve worked with him refer him to others; the relationships often span years. His guiding question isn’t “how do I get a striking photo,” but how to honor the people in front of his camera — presenting their reality honestly rather than dressing it up.
Espay is candid about the blurred line between bearing witness and intruding. He lets subjects set the boundary, staying alert to the moment — sometimes unspoken — when someone is done. He traces that sensitivity back to an early, humbling lesson: as a young photographer, he once tried to photograph his dying grandmother’s final moments, only for his mother to ask him, gently but firmly, to put the camera away. He didn’t read the room. It’s a lesson he’s carried into every fragile situation since.
Giving the Camera Away
Perhaps the most striking part of the conversation is Espay’s work with Statement Arts, the nonprofit he co-runs that has brought photography workshops — and more than a hundred donated cameras — to young and at-risk photographers in Myanmar and Laos, including activists documenting civil war and human rights abuses in their own communities.
His reasoning is direct: the person living through a crisis has a vantage point no outside photographer, however skilled, can replicate. “If your community is being affected, you have the front row,” he says. Teaching people to document their own reality isn’t just about representation — Espay believes the act of processing trauma through a camera can become part of healing, not right away, but over time.
The Throughline
Asked what connects a presidential portrait, a Vogue campaign, and a camera handed to a teenager in Yangon, Espay doesn’t hesitate: humanity. He describes a photograph without a person in it as feeling “naked” — missing something essential. Whatever the assignment, his real subject has always been the same: people, and the connection that happens when two people — photographer and subject — meet honestly, even for a moment.
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About My Guest
Award-winning photographer, Ari Espay, splits his time between New York City and Santiago, Chile. Ari has shot documentary pieces, campaigns and editorial essays for magazines in the US and all over South America including; Architectural Digest, Vogue Latin America, Que Pasa, and ED. He has worked for Maybelline, Gillette, Corpbanca, Ferouch, New Man, Kohana Rum, Amazon/AWS, Australis Cruise to name a few and has shot portraits for Presidents, internationally known actors, Emmy Award winning directors, Broadway performers, politicians and high profile business people.
With numerous gallery exhibitions, Ari’s recent show, “A Glimpse of Southeast Asia” was featured at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna, a museum in Cento, Italy (2018 – 2019). Other exhibitions include; 2026 “Rostros, El Mar De Cultura” Valencia Photo Festival, Spain. 2025 “FACES / VISAGES” , Art-Icon Collective Exhibition Arles, France. 2024 “Corporeality” Art-Icon Collective Exhibition – Paris, 2024 “Moments in Time” Art on the Avenue – New York City, New York, 2021 Art on the Avenue – New York City, New York “Art on the Avenue” (New York City 2021), “Mingalabar Myanmar”(Rome and Bologna, Italy – 2016) and “The Faces of EB” in New York City (2015).
In 2012, he was named as Artistic Director of International Projects for Galeria64, the only gallery in Chile exhibiting photography exclusively.
Ari has won Chile’s prestigious Fondart Grant, was a 2026 Finalist Lucie Foundation On The Block Street Photography, a 2026 Selected Winner American Photography AI-AP 42, a 2024 Portraiture Bronze Winner Prix de la Photographie Paris PX3, Short Listed “EB” State of the World Project Prix de la Photographie Paris PX3, Street Photography Honorable Mention Prix de la Photographie Paris PX3 and 4 Portraiture Honorable Mention Prix de la Photographie Paris PX3, a 2024, 2022 BIFA Budapest International Foto Award Silver winner in Book / Documentary, 2022 MIFA Moscow International Photo Award Winner for our book, 2020Unmasked, in the Documentary Book category.
He was the photo editor for “2020 Unmasked” book which won 2 Honorable Mentions at the IPA/International Photography Awards for Documentary and Self-published book.
For 10 years, he taught photography workshops for National Geographic and their legendary photographers including, Joe McNally, Bob Sacha, Ira Block, VII’s agency Ed Kashi and Magnum’s David Alan Harvey. He has worked and traveled in more than 40 countries.
Ari speaks 3 languages and enjoys spending time in the mountains.
Find Ari Espay:
- Website: ariespayphotography.com
- Instagram: @ari_espay
- Photography Workshops: fancygirlstreetboy.com
- Nonprofit: StatementArts.org
What did you take away from this interview with Ari Espay?
I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Ari and afterwards felt that I had learned a lot – what did you take from this amazing interview. Find me on Instagram or Threads and let me know!
