Adam Shemper's documentary photography and photojournalism focus on the emotional truths and existential conditions of people’s lives in both ordinary and difficult circumstances. His deeply-felt photographs explore the human condition at the crossroads of social, political and environmental concerns and psycho-spiritual realities. As a journalist he has written about people trapped in war and sanctions, in the U.S. prison-industrial complex and fragmented mental health system with the intention to represent our greatest longings for wholeness, love, freedom and connection.

Born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Shemper is a photographer, writer and psychotherapist. His images and words have appeared in Time, The New York Times, Mother Jones, The Paris Review, Double Take Magazine, Exposure, The Oxford American, Salon.com, The Shambhala Sun, as well as in national and foreign newspapers The San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post, San Jose Mercury News, The Daily Yomiuri Shimbun (Japan) and The Bund (Shanghai). Selected images from his series "Sardis Lake" (2000) were included in the International Center of Photography's 2003 exhibition Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self. He recently contributed a photograph from his series "Portraits of Invisible Men" to the Academy Award-nominated director Ava DuVernay's documentary 13th, which premiered on October 8, 2016. His studio, Kingfisher, is in Healdsburg, California.