About Kyle Cassidy

Photographer & storyteller

Kyle Cassidy has been documenting American culture since the 1990s. He has photographed goths, punks, politicians, metalheads, scholars, nurses, oil workers, librarians, and a wide assortment of people who make the world more interesting, all with compassion and a genuine curiosity.

His work ranges from studio portraits of Occupy Wall Street protesters and the scientists behind the New Horizons mission to Pluto, to long‑form projects about payphones, libraries, roller derby athletes, and the spaces where people live and work. His photographs have appeared in publications including The New York Times, Vanity Fair, the Sunday Times of London, Marie Claire, Entertainment Weekly, Time, Newsweek, Variety, Interview, and others.

His books include Armed America: Portraits of Gun Owners in Their Homes, War Paint: Tattoo Culture and the Armed Forces, Geek Knits (with Joan of Dark), This Is What a Librarian Looks Like, and the recent This Is Only Earth, My Dear and The (Mostly) Complete Poems of Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal. He is also the photographer behind the gigantic 16×20 Bed Song Book.

In the past few years he has continued to balance books and long‑term documentary work with commissions and theater and music photography, including portraits and production stills for companies on both sides of the Atlantic. When he isn’t on the road, he can often be found photographing the vanishing infrastructure of everyday life.

Kyle’s projects have taken him from American living rooms to homeless communities in Romania, archaeological digs in Egypt, and backstage at theaters, conventions, and concerts. He is interested in how people build meaning, communities, and identities, and in the objects and spaces that tell those stories. He's obsessed with mechanical cameras, fountain pens, messenger bags, payphones, UX design, appropriately sized pockets, Pre-Raphaelite painters, and finding homes for stray kittens. He is happy to talk your ear off about any of them.

He is friendly, and you really shouldn’t be afraid to email him.

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