Carol Dragon is a New York City based photographer who focuses on portraiture, dance and documentary projects. Since 2015, Dragon has been working on a long term project documenting the community and culture of New York City street dancers. For this immersive work, Dragon was awarded 2017 and 2018 Creative Engagement grants by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and a 2018 Citizens Committee of New York City Neighborhood Grant.
Dragon holds a BFA and MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, where she began her career as a painter. Since 1990, Dragon has worked solely with photography, but the influence of the painter’s eye still informs her practice.
Her work has been exhibited in multiple solo shows in New York City. Dragon recently staged an event, Beyond the Yellow Tape, which paired her portraits and videos of street dancers with live dance performances. In spring of 2019 her commissioned portraits for Families Belong Together were shown at SXSW in Austin, Texas. This exhibition was part of the ACLU 100 Years Experience. Her images have been featured in The Photo Review, Shots Magazine, The Culture Trip, and Synergy Magazine. Dragon’s work was showcased in the Cynthia Dantzig book, 100 New York Photographers.
In addition to working actively as a photographer, Dragon teaches at the International Center of Photography in New York and has done a number of workshops in Italy, Dubai, Maine and Austin, Texas. PDN magazine ranked her as one of the top photography instructors in the article: The Best Photo Workshops: A Reader Survey.
