Brittany M. Powell was born in Naples, Italy and grew up in the Washington DC area and New Orleans, LA. She moved to San Francisco in 1999 to study photography at the California College of the Arts and graduated in 2003. Since then she has worked as a freelance documentary and editorial photographer and filmmaker (www.brittanyMpowell.comand www.thedebtproject.net).
Brittany earned an MFA from San Francisco State University in 2015 and is an adjunct professor of photography and video at Norwich University. She was a regular contributor to the now defunct SF Bay Guardian, and her work has been published in the Washington Post, Slate Magazine, Fast Company, Featureshoot, Hyperallergic, USA Today, the Huffington Post, National Geographic, the San Francisco Chronicle, Yoga Journal, and Chronicle Books. She has shot commercial campaigns for clients including Stub Hub, Levi's and BMW. She has exhibited work at SF Camerawork, Flux Factory New York, Smack Mellon, Root Division, SOMArts, Secession Gallery, California College of the Arts, San Francisco State University, Johnson State College and Headlands Center for the Arts.
In 2015 and 2016, Brittany was a finalist for the Dorothea Lange/Paul Taylor prize in documentary, as well as a semi-finalist for the Documentary Essay Award from Duke's Center for Documentary Studies, and second place award winner of the Curator's Choice at the Santa Fe Photo Review in 2016. She was awarded fellowships from both the Vermont Studio Center and the Headlands Center for the Arts in 2015.
