Stephen Voss

Catching up on a few recents shoots I’ve done. 1. Far right German politician Markus Frohnmaier (left) for Die Zeit (along with an extremely unfriendly hotel security guard in the foreground). 2. Neoconservative Robert Kagan for Der Spiegel. 3. Norwegian Minister of Finance (and former NATO secretary general) Jens Stoltenberg for The Observer. 4. Rep. Sarah McBride for the Washingtonian. 5. President of the Human Rights Campaign Kelley Robinson for Politico. 6. A Petworth parents group for The Washington Post.

A Country in Contradiction. 🇺🇸 Seen by Stephen Voss/Redux/laif 2026 brings two dates that are hard to ignore: 250 years USA. And Donald Trump turns 80 – in the middle of his second term. What do these anniversaries mean? What do they say about the state of this country? We asked selected photographers from our partner agency Redux Pictures. In the last part of our series, photojournalist Stephen Voss talks about his work and his perspective on the USA. @stephenvoss @reduxpictures

This is a @justingellerson appreciation post. As of this week, my dear friend and long time collaborator @JustinGellerson now lives on the west coast and is available for work in SF/Oakland and beyond. Justin and I have worked together on hundreds of shoots, ranging from headshots of lawyers to photographing the President of the United States for the cover of Time. Justin is an absolute lighting master and technical wizard, but more importantly, he’s the person you want on your side for any shoot. He’s a world-class problem solver, adept at handling crises big and small and solving them with creativity and speed. He knows how to read a room, how to work on a large set with demanding clients, and how to unstick a backdrop pole using olive oil. But what I’ll miss the most is his kindness and his willingness to go the extra mile to turn a good photo into a great one (as well as his impeccable music taste). I’ve talked to so many other photographers who have worked with him - many with styles and approaches vastly different than my own, and they all say the same thing: Justin is the best. If you’re a photographer or creative in the Bay Area looking for someone who will make your work better and your day brighter, reach out to Justin — you won’t regret it.

Craig Venter (1946-2026), who outpaced the government-funded Human Genome Project to decode the human genome. On June 27, 2000, the New York Times reported: In an achievement that represents a pinnacle of human self-knowledge, two rival groups of scientists said today that they had deciphered the hereditary script, the set of instructions that defines the human organism. I met him briefly for a portrait backstage at the Washington Ideas Forum (now The Atlantic Festival).

My photos of data centers in northern Virginia accompany an article entitled, “How the American Oligarchy Went Hyperscale” by Tim Murphy. Huge thanks to Mark Murrman (@ickibod ) for thinking of me. I’ve been following the photography in Mother Jones as long as I’ve been a photographer and it’s a dream to have my photos in this month’s issue. Photo editors - I’m still working on the larger data center story and have made 50+ photo trips to the area (as well as trips to Abilene, Texas for Project Stargate and Memphis for the xAI site) . Please do reach out if you’re interested in seeing a larger edit. Also have some very exciting news about the project that I’ll be able to share in a couple of months.

The Smithsonian Institution is a national treasure and its museums here in DC are visited by millions of people every year. But, I recently drove out to Suitland, Maryland to photograph at what might be the most fascinating place in the entirety of the Smithsonian’s vast expanse of museums and warehouses. It’s simply called the Museum Support Center. Inside the storage pods, each the size of a football field, are most of the 154 million specimens held by the National Museum of Natural History. I spent the day photographing there, trying to capture just the tiniest of fractions of the absolutely mind-blowing collection. @justingellerson and I had to figure out how to capture mosquitoes not much larger than the head of a pin and whale bones that were forty feet long. We saw flesh eating beetles, an Antarctic Scale Worm (that will haunt my dreams), trays that slid open to reveal the entire skin of a giraffe, tropical birds in outrageous colors and so many alien looking creatures collected from the sea and floating in jars (known as “the wet collection” and taking up 72 kilometers (!!!) of shelving). Even better, we were fortunate to meet the scientists who studied these collections and basically said yes to each and every request we had (“Yes, you can hold the flesh-eating beetle.”) It was the dream assignment of dream assignments and I could spend another year there and still barely even begin to take in the enormity of the collection. You can read @meghanrosen_science ‘s wonderful story that my photos accompany in Science News. My enormous thanks to Justine Hirshfeld (@jhirshfeld ) who reached out for this story and accompanied us on the shoot. Her support and guidance is what made this a success.

The Department of Homeland Security is a vast organization that includes everything from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to advocates interviewing people applying for asylum in refugee camps around the world. In March and April I traveled across the United States to photograph some of these former government employees and hear their stories. To tell this story, reporters with The New York Times Magazine interviewed over 80 people to compile the oral history of the DHS in the first two years of the Trump administration. The story of DHS in the Trump administration is not one of attrition or incremental change, but a radical reinvention of the agency’s focus and purpose. Pictured here are: 1. Jason Marks, former supervisory refugee officer at U.S.C.I.S. 2. Darius Reeves, former ICE field office director in Baltimore 3. Adam Boyd, former ICE attorney 4. Mimi Tsankov, former immigration judge 5. Blas Nuñez-Neto, former chief operating officer of Customs and Border Protection (C.B.P.) 6. Ryan Schwank, former ICE attorney from the story: A White House spokeswoman, Abigail Jackson, [...] responded to a request for comment. “President Trump’s highest priority has always been the deportation of illegal alien criminals who endanger American communities,” she wrote in an email. “As the Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly said, approximately 70 percent of deportations to date have been illegal aliens with criminal records.” The government’s own records complicate that picture. Only about 5 percent of people booked into ICE custody in the last year have been convicted of a violent crime. The number of arrests of people with violent convictions has increased by 37 percent under Trump, while the number of arrests of those with no conviction of any kind has risen by 770 percent, according to ICE data. Many agents and officials we spoke to say the relentless pursuit of deportations is unsustainable and has compromised the department. — A huge thanks to Kristen Geisler at the magazine and to @justingellerson for his thoughtful approach to creating the lighting for this work.

Trying something new here - I send out an email newsletter 4x or so a year and thought I’d try bringing the one I sent last week to IG. I’ve spread it out over the comments, let me know if this works for you.

Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar for Colossus Magazine.

A few verticals I liked from my shoot a few weeks back with Congresswoman Nancy Mace. Mace is running for Governor in South Carolina in a stacked primary taking place on June 9th. If no candidate receives 50% of the vote, they’ll go to a run-off on June 23rd. The photos were taken to accompany a story by Michael Kruse that was published on Friday in Politico. I highly encourage you to read the story, which includes these astonishing insights and quotes that may never be equalled in a political profile, like: Politics perpetually has been a redoubt for the wounded seeking to fill the holes that they have. Mace is an utmost example. “My story,” I saw her say at a campaign stop in Spartanburg, “is I am totally broken.”

Michael Kruse’s opus on Congresswoman Nancy Mace was published today at Politico. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to call Michael one of, if not the best writer of political profiles working today. The piece is staggering in its rawness and intimacy and left me marvelling at his ability to craft this story and to have put the time in to understand the roots of what fuels Rep. Mace’s drive. From the article: Mace is a 48-year-old twice-divorced mother of two. She often walks with a gun. She sometimes shops in a wig. She always sleeps (the little she sleeps) under a 20-pound heavy blanket she thinks isn’t heavy enough. She says she does what she does because of “an engine” that she “can’t control” and that “just fucking goes” and is “going to go and go and go.” She says she gets the tattoos that she gets because of “the pain that I need to feel.” “My story,” I saw her say at a campaign stop in Spartanburg, “is I am totally broken.”

In January, I photographed David Sundberg, former assistant director in charge of the Washington field office, one of the highest ranking employees of the FBI who spoke to reporter Emily Bazelon for her story, “A Year Inside Kash Patel’s F.B.I.: Forty-five current and former employees on the changes they say are undermining the agency and making America less safe.” The story opens with this quote from Sundberg, “You need leadership that believes in the nonpartisan independence of the agency.” Today, David Sundberg announced that he would run for Congress this year in Maryland’s 5th Congressional District, in the seat retiring Rep. Steny Hoyer has held since 1981.