Wesaam Al-Badry is an investigative journalist, and interdisciplinary artist working in photography, video installation, sculpture, and painting through interconnected themes of identity, migration, simulated wars, and the archives. His work focuses on the social and environmental issues in the U.S., Middle East, and the North African diaspora. His current projects investigate how the image-based process and text are complicit in using racialized ethnographic studies in Iraq.

​His early arduous childhood experiences sculpted Al-Badry’s work, which focuses on imagining the human struggle with dignity, and love.

​Al-Badry was born in Nasiriyah, Iraq, when he was seven years old, at the outset of what became known as the Gulf War, his family fled to Saudi Arabia and lived in refugee camps for four and a half years. In late 1994, Al-Badry and his family were relocated to Lincoln, NE.

​Al-Badry has worked for global media outlets, including CNN and Al-Jazeera America. His photographs have been featured in the New York Times, Rolling Stone Magazine, The Atlantic, NPR, Fortune, The Nation, and Mother Jones. Al-Badry has received The John Collier Jr. Award for Still Photography, Dorothea Lange Fellowship, the Jim Marshall Fellowship for Photography, The National Geographic Society fellowship, Magnum Foundation, and The Emerson Collective, and is currently a fellow at The Center for Visual Documentation. His artwork has been exhibited internationally at museums including the de Young Fine Arts Museum in San Francisco, the Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt, Germany, Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York City, Bernstein Gallery at Princeton University, Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, and Jenkins Johnston Gallery in San Francisco.

He currently resides between Berkeley, CA, and Lincoln, NE. Al-Badry received his master’s in New Media journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, and his BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Al-Badry is represented by the Jenkins Johnson Gallery in San Francisco and New York, East Wing Gallery, and Contact Press Images, NYC.

Jake Ricker is a documentary photographer based in San Francisco. With a background spanning nearly a decade as a bike messenger, he seized the unique opportunity to carry his camera wherever he went. This allowed him to capture the everyday fabric of human life, ranging from moments of comedy and romance to instances of riots, violence, police activities, graffiti, and everything in between encountered during his daily deliveries.

Over the last six years, Jake has devoted his everyday time to documenting The Golden Gate Bridge for his ongoing project Strange Paradise. He has invested more than 12,000 hours and covered more than 12,000 miles along the east sidewalk, camera in hand. Having amassed a portfolio of more than 3,000 rolls of film, Ricker’s goal is to unveil his candid street-style photography, presenting the people of the bridge for the first time.

During his daily walks, Ricker seamlessly blends in as an average tourist with a camera. Unintentionally, he has played a crucial role in preventing suicides, having assisted more than 90 people. This unexpected aspect of the project was never part of the initial plan, surprising even Ricker himself. With the goal of completing the project within the next year, coinciding with the installation of the suicide net, Ricker continues to capture the diverse stories embedded in the Golden Gate Bridge’s fabric.

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