Bethany Mollenkof
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Overview
Featured
ACLU Magazine
Airbnb Icons x Kevin Hart
American Express x Issa Rae
Pfizer / Advil
2020 marked the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, which took place on May 31 and June 1, 1921—one of the most horrific incidents of racial violence in American history.
The massacre ignited after 19-year-old Dick Rowland, a Black shoe shiner, was accused of assaulting Sarah Page, a 17-year-old white elevator operator at the Drexel building.
Despite the claim proving to be false, a mob set out to lynch Rowland and proceeded to terrorize, torture, and murders hundreds of Black citizens in Tulsa’s thriving Greenwood neighborhood, a business and residential community known as Black Wall Street.
Many survivors left Tulsa, while those who stayed kept silent about the violence for decades. The massacre was purposefully omitted from local, state, and national histories.
Commissioned by National Geographic Magazine.
Project
The Tulsa Race Massacre: 100 Years Later
Project
Birth in a Time of Death [A Love Letter to my Daughter.]
“I found out I was pregnant, for the first time, with a girl three months before the Covid-19 pandemic shut down the U.S. and forced me to shelter-in-place in Los Angeles. As a photographer, I have often documented what it’s like to be pregnant as a Black woman in the American south. Covid-19 pushed me to document my own experience as a Black pregnant woman living through extraordinary circumstances.” — BETHANY MOLLENKOF
This series was published in National Geographic Magazine, 2020.
Project
Birthing in Alabama
Politicians debate abortion bands, the health risks associated with having a baby in Alabama are only becoming greater.
A state where many boast about a commitment to protect every life, Black women are about five times more likely to die during childbirth than white women.
This project documents the people and birth workers trying to shift this reality.
Project
Everything Belongs
A collection of some of Bethany Mollenkof’s favorite personal snapshots.
Bethany Mollenkof (she/her) is a photographer and director based in Los Angeles.
Her work uses a thoughtful approach to tell complex stories about gender, culture, identity, and representation through an engaging, vibrant, and artistic process. For Mollenkof, documenting narratives through physical place, archival research, oral and written recollection, and objects of significance is integral in connecting past to present.
A former Los Angeles Times staff photographer, Mollenkof was a visiting Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 2021. She is a member of Women Photograph, Diversify Photo, Authority Collective, and Free the Work. In 2022, she was selected as one of The 30: New and Emerging Photographers.
Mollenkof graduated from Western Kentucky University, where she studied photojournalism and art history.
Bio