Kylee Pastore Asirvatham
In 2025, CCNY alumna Olga Ginzburg (‘15) was selected for the esteemed Dear New York: Humans of New York exhibition in Grand Central Station for her community documentary project on Staten Island, Encounters. In addition to her documentary work, Ginzburg now works as a full-time freelance editorial photographer, with bylines and assignments for The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, NPR, and the New York Post.
But her journey did not begin with early success, or even with a carefully mapped plan. It began with uncertainty. In early adulthood, photography was less a career trajectory than an anchor. Ginzburg came to photography well outside of academia. She had already dropped out of school and spent her early years searching for her voice. She found it in photography, long before she imagined it as a profession.” By the time she arrived at CCNY in her late twenties, photography had already become a way of orienting herself in the world. It is precisely this nonlinear path that gives Ginzburg’s work its particular richness. Her story, marked by detours, pauses, and returns, ultimately led her into a deeply fulfilling vocation that is far more than just a job.
Ginzburg fell in love with photography years before she ever picked up a camera. She wandered museums, flipped through photobooks, and immersed herself in cinema—experiences she now recognizes as her first teachers, even if she didn’t know it at the time. Photography, she says, has a way of changing perception. By steeping herself in great works, historical and contemporary, she learned how to see before rushing to make images of her own.
Her transition from looking to making was not as solitary as it began. She recalls her first photography class at Cooper Union around 2008–9 as a pivotal moment. After that color analog class, she was hooked and immediately continued her studies at the Educational Alliance, a rare, affordable, community-based art space. There, she expanded her technical knowledge through black-and-white wet darkroom courses, found mentorship with Azikiwe Mohammad, and soon transitioned from student to salon participant to instructor. When the Educational Alliance darkroom closed, she felt ready to pursue a more formal education, and that path led her to the Art Department at City College.
It wasn’t that Ginzburg rejected higher education outright; rather, she needed time—time to grow, to mature, to become ready. Entering the classroom as an older student proved to be a meaningful path she never could have drawn up for herself. “City College cracked my skull open in the best way,” Ginzburg explains. “I fell in love not just with the Art Department, but with everything. My work and ideas were respected there.” She began her studies toward a BA in Studio Art with a concentration in photography, but was equally enamored by CCNY’s broader curriculum, from world civilizations to astrophysics. Any initial self-consciousness quickly gave way to a sense of belonging, bolstered by mentorship from faculty members including Lise Kjaer, Becca Albee, Jennifer Williams, and Maria Politarhos. “Having professors believe in you like that,” she reflects, “it makes you take yourself more seriously.”
One of the most formative experiences of her time at CCNY was her participation in the Connor Study Abroad Fellowship, which fully funded an immersive semester in Paris. There, she was trusted with resources and given the rare opportunity to shoot photography full-time. It was in Paris that her street photography took root, work that would later inform her shift toward portraiture. For Ginzburg, the experience was not simply travel: it was confirmation.
Ginzburg left her childhood home on Staten Island as a teenager, fueled by an urgent desire to escape. But after returning from Paris and graduating from CCNY, she felt compelled to return—this time with a different perspective. The visual and sensory contrasts with Manhattan remained: American suburbia, coastal culture, familiar rhythms. Yet the place had changed. And so had she.
She returned not as a wandering teenager, but as a photographer, stepping back onto a post–Hurricane Sandy landscape with new eyes. When she began photographing there, she encountered an experience as distinct as the borough itself. “It’s not Manhattan,” she explains. “You can’t just grab a photo and disappear. By necessity you have to stop, talk to people, get to know them—and that changed everything.” Her early portraits were marked by nerves and vulnerability, but she came to understand shyness not as a barrier, but as part of the work. Through this act of bearing witness, she began what would become a decade-long commitment to community storytelling. Her ongoing project, Encounters, began in 2016 and now approaches its tenth year. The work blends documentary photography, portraiture, and community narrative into a layered visual record. Though Ginzburg has since moved back to Manhattan, Staten Island continues to exert a powerful pull on her imagination, and she remains committed to the project with the intention of producing a book. Images from Encounters were later selected for Dear New York, the Humans of New York exhibition.
When Humans of New York released an open call, it was one of Ginzburg’s students who encouraged her to apply. She was ultimately selected as part of a small group of photographers to exhibit in Vanderbilt Hall at Grand Central Station. “To suddenly have a much wider audience than I ever would have otherwise—it was overwhelming in the best way,” she recalls. “It was one of the great honors of my life. To see people stop, look, and spend time with the work—that’s the most rewarding feeling.”
Alongside her portraiture, Ginzburg has now completed her first full year as a freelance editorial photographer. Like many freelancers, she has experienced the feast-and-famine cycles of the work, navigating tensions between speed and perfection, deadlines and personal projects, all while carrying the emotional labor inherent in human-interest reporting. “I had to try it to know,” she says. “And even with the stress, I realized I’m well-suited for editorial photography, for being part of the storytelling.”
Ginzburg does not see herself as having “arrived.” There is no finish line in creative work. Still, she takes genuine joy in her growth, her accomplishments, and the opportunities she has been given. She continues to refine her way of seeing: a practice that began years ago in museums and photobooks. CCNY, she reflects, not only prepared her for the work ahead, but remains a lasting home base, one that continues to shape her present as much as her past.
Learn more about Olga Ginzburg's work here: https://www.olgaginzburg.com/