Jason Gardner is an American photographer who divides his time between New York and Paris. He describes his work as visual anthropology. It centers on music, culture and ritual.
For more than 15 years he has photographed traditional Carnival in 15 countries. Most of these portraits are shot on film. His first book, A Flower in the Mouth (Visual Anthropology Press, 2013), is about Carnaval in Pernambuco, Brazil. His second, We the Spirits (GOST Books, 2023), collects medium-format portraits of masqueraders from 15 countries. It has 232 pages and an essay by Giovanni Kezich.
In 2022 the project was selected as a Top 50 portfolio by Photolucida's Critical Mass, and GEO Magazine France published a ten-page portfolio of it. Gardner also photographs musicians and other people for editorial and commercial clients, including HBO, Samsung and Human Rights Watch. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Rolling Stone and Le Parisien.
