Biography

Sarah Blesener is a documentary photographer based in New York City. Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, she studied Linguistics and Youth Development at North Central University. While in college, she worked as a photographer for Healing Haiti based in Port au Prince, Haiti, covering events surrounding the 2010 earthquake. After graduation in 2012, she studied at Bookvar Russian Academy in Minneapolis, concentrating on the Russian language and later continued her studies at the Visual Journalism and Documentary Practice program at the International Center of Photography in New York. Her latest work revolves around youth movements and culture in Russia, Eastern Europe, and the United States. In 2017, she received funding to support her U.S. work on this project from the Alexia Foundation and from Catchlight, which selected her as a fellow embedded with Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting.