Cultures at Risk Presenter Biographies

Stephen Ferry

Keepers of the World: the story of the indigenous peoples of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia

Stephen Ferry was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1960. At the age of 12 he began hanging around Ferranti-Dege, a nearby photo store and lab, where he first learned to develop and print black and white photographs. As a child, he witnessed the “counter-culture” — the riots and protests against the Vietnam War that rocked the streets of Cambridge — giving him a life-long passion for observing political and social movements first-hand.

Since the late 1980s, Stephen has traveled to dozens of countries, concentrating on issues of indigenous rights, social and political unrest, and environmental destruction. He is currently documenting the civil war in Colombia, while carrying out assignments for such publications as GEO, TIME, US News, The New York Times, and National Geographic. Stephen is the recipient of numerous awards, including two World Press Photo awards and several first place awards in the NPPA Picture of the Year contest.

Stephen’s work on the Quechua silver miners of Potosi, Bolivia, was published as a book in 1999, I Am Rich Potosi: The Mountain that Eats Men (Monacelli Press). He is currently preparing Tayrona Resistance, a book documenting the struggles of the indigenous peoples of the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta to preserve their identity and environment, based on his October, 2004, National Geographic article, “Keepers of the World.”