About amanda rivkin, photographer

            Amanda Rivkin is a photojournalist based in Baku, Azerbaijan with a Fulbright fellowship (2011-2012) in photography for a project focusing on women at the crossroads of Turkic, Persian, Russian and Western culture.  She has worked in numerous countries: across Eastern Europe in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and the Caucasus as well as in Cuba, Ethiopia, Germany, Israel and the Palestinian Territories, Mexico, Spain and Turkey.

            Amanda began photographing in 2007 while a graduate student at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.  From there, she held an internship with The Associated Press bureau in Madrid where she wrote, translated and photographed breaking news and features.  Afterwards, she spent time in Ethiopia covering the Coptic millennium celebration for The Associated Press and BBC Focus on Africa magazine.  She received a McCloy Fellowship in Journalism (2007) from the American Council on Germany that fall to research and write an article focusing on Bundestag Member of Parliament Erika Steinbach’s plan for a Center Against Expulsions in Berlin, a reflection on the tumultuous nature of German-Polish relations. 

            She then returned to the United States, turning her sights towards the historic 2008 presidential election. Based in her hometown Chicago in 2008-2009, Amanda covered Barack Obama’s 2008 election night victory and transition to the presidency, the historic inauguration in Washington, former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s political demise on corruption charges, the financial crisis and other social issues across the Midwest region of the United States with The New York Times as a primary client. Additionally she received assignments from Agence France Presse, Courrier Japan, The Financial Times, Le Monde, and others.

            While in graduate school at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service focusing on terrorism and sub-state violence as a concentration in the Security Studies Program, Amanda received a Young Explorers Grant (2010) from the Expeditions Council of the National Geographic Society to travel to Azerbaijan, Georgia, and eastern Turkey to photograph the socio-economic transformations along the route of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline.  The same year, she was the author and photographer of a Slovakia travel guide, a special magazine-length publication of the English language newspaper The Slovak Spectator.  Amanda was also the co-creator of the initial series of “Turning Point” posts on The New York Times Lens blog featuring the work of young photojournalists alongside the work that inspired their own.