Stephen Shames is an American documentary photographer. He was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1947. He makes photo essays on social issues for foundations, advocacy organizations, the media and museums.
In 1966 he was 19 and a student at the University of California at Berkeley. That summer he went to the East Village, bought a cheap camera in a pawn shop and started taking pictures. At Berkeley, Bobby Seale became his mentor.
His books include Outside the Dream: Child Poverty in America (Aperture and Children's Defense Fund, 1991), Power to the People: The World of the Black Panthers with Bobby Seale (Abrams, 2016) and Comrade Sisters: Women of the Black Panther Party with Ericka Huggins (ACC Art Books, 2022). Outside the Dream won the Kodak Crystal Eagle Award for Impact in Photojournalism.
Stephen Shames: A Lifetime in Photography was published by Kehrer Verlag in 2025. It has 228 pages and 136 photographs. Caleb Cain Marcus designed it. The book does not follow a straight career timeline. It works like a visual collage.
His photographs are in the permanent collections of 42 international museums and foundations, including MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum and the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. He also started an NGO. It finds forgotten children, such as AIDS orphans and former child soldiers, and sends them to the best schools and colleges.
