Michael Kamber
Revson Fellow 2001-2002
Writer and Photographer
Michael Kamber was born in Harpswell, Maine in 1963. Since the late 1980’s, he has worked as a New York City-based freelance writer and photographer.
In the early 1990’s, Mr. Kamber worked extensively in the Caribbean. There he covered social issues and politics in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. In Haiti, Mr. Kamber reported on terror killings of civilians by the Tonton Macoutes and the struggle for power between followers of Aristide and Duvalier, the dictator who had been overthrown several years earlier.
In New York City, Mr. Kamber has documented the immigrant population and made numerous trips to Mexico to produce articles about the massive migration of laborers to the U.S., and the effects of this exodus on Mexican society. In September of 2001, Mr. Kamber traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he spent several months writing and photographing a series of articles examining religious fundamentalism, the plight of long-term Afghan refugees and the future of a post-Taliban Afghanistan. Mr. Kamber spent 2003 and 2004 working for The New York Times in West Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean, covering conflicts in the Ivory Coast, Congo, Liberia, Haiti and Iraq.
His work has appeared in dozens of magazines and newspapers in the Canada, Europe and the U.S. He is the winner of the Columbia University School of Journalism’s Mike Berger Award, honoring human interest reporting about daily life in New York City, the Missouri School of Journalism’s Lifestyle Award, the Society of Professional Journalists Deadline Club Award and is part of the N.Y. Times team that won the Overseas Press Club award for photographic coverage of Iraq. He has been nominated twice for the Pulitzer Prize, once for photography and once for reporting.
During his Revson year, Mr. Kamber took courses in Spanish, journalism and reporting on youth, and pursued an independent study of Mexican immigrant issues with Barnard Professor Robert Smith. Mr. Kamber is currently working as a freelance photographer and writer for The New York Times.
(The Revson Fellow’s biography that appears above was last updated in 2001. Revson Fellows may update their biographies on this site by sending email to: revson@columbia.edu)
Revson’s greatest benefit to me was the opportunity to learn and grow professionally with a diverse group of spirited, contentious, challenging, and stimulating peers whose only common denominator was a commitment to make New York City a better place.
