Using Photography and Film to Tell Untold Stories With Talor Stone and Ashlei Payne

Ashlei Payne is an alumna from Pratt Institute and an award-winning documentary filmmaker and photojournalist. From the formidable rainforests of Borneo to the countryside of Kashmir, Ashlei lives with her subjects for extended periods and completely immerses herself in the lives of others. Her work often examines environmental change, natural disaster aftermath, corrupt government systems, and the emotions that accompany these events.

In the last five years she has worked with non-profits across the globe such as ARCHIVE Global in Bangladesh, Shangri-La Trek in Nepal, Sakolah Adat Arus Kualan in Borneo, and with CNN Hero nominee, Madè Janur Yasa of Plastic Exchange in Bali, Indonesia.

In the past year alone Ashlei has won six film festivals including; Outstanding Performance Best Director Award New York, Best Documentary film at Los Angeles Film Awards, and Best Documentary at Los Vegas International.

Talor Stone is a professional landscape photographer and Ph.D. researcher whose work merges visual art with fact-based knowledge about Earth's vulnerable environments and cultures. For the last 4 years, Talor has specialized in pioneering academic research on the impacts of globalization and a changing climate on Greenland's rural communities. She has spent two summers in Greenland immersed in the local culture and landscape working to lay the foundation for the project that they share with us today.

Talor's photography is represented in galleries in New Orleans, LA and Carmel, CA. She works as an educator with Muench Workshops - the world's premier photography education organization - and is a contributor to the Arctic Arts Project - an organization dedicated to visually communicating the science of climate change.