Canyon de Chelly— A series & conversation with Caden Choi

For her work, Caden Choi was named a Young Arts winner by the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts in 2025. She is also the winner of the 2026 New York Times Teen Photo Essay Contest.

Caden Choi's photography begins with an obsession: people and cultures, and the everyday stories that usually go unnoticed. Over several years, she returned again and again to the Navajo Nation, where Diné families have farmed and raised livestock in their sacred canyons for thousands of years. Working in black and white, driven by light and shadow, grounded in a commitment to female representation, Choi documents a matrilineal community. We spoke with her about how she started, how she works, and what it took to be let in.

Artists have obsessions. Mine are people and cultures. Photography, for me, is an inquiry into the everyday stories that go unnoticed. These are the moments I chase. In a years-long series, I explored the unique heritage of Diné Native American families that have raised livestock and farmed the lands of their sacred canyons for thousands of years. These photos were taken in Navajo Nation at the home of Spider Woman, who is thought to have taught Navajos the art of weaving. To the Diné, weaving is more spiritual than it is art, and their beliefs are imbued in their creations. Light is an important part of my work. It is intangible but functions both to highlight and to recede. In black and white, I use selective conversion to isolate tonal range. Shadows replace language, and where light recedes, the story remains. 

The Journal: Your obsessions in photography are people and cultures. Where did that start?

Caden: I started photography when I was about nine. None of my family is into it at all — my mom's actually a dentist, and I picked up one of her old Canon DSLRs, the one she used to photograph patients' teeth. Totally unrelated, but that's how I got into it. I mostly taught myself at the beginning. From a really young age I've just always been drawn to culture. I've never been able to sit in front of a landscape and photograph something still. So I got into street photography early. One of my first photo projects was on Jeju Island in Korea, where my family is from, photographing my family members and my godparents. From there I became obsessed with cultures and really connected to different people, and I started photographing different environments, trying to get my feet dipped in every direction I could.

The Journal: You work mostly in a documentary mode rather than anything staged. What makes you stop and shoot?

Caden: At the beginning I definitely overshot, because I was scared I'd get to a scene and not catch as much as I wanted. But I try to surround myself with places and stories that usually go unnoticed. I really want to bring up underrepresented, underreported stories. The best moments for me are the ones that aren't staged, especially when I can tell someone is genuinely invested in what they're doing. When somebody starts telling me about their background or their story, I'll just start shooting, even when they're not posing for me. That's the best part of photography — being able to capture people without them having to perform for you.

The Journal: Would you put a name to your style?

Caden: Besides documentary photography, there's the street photography I mentioned — everyday spaces — and a lot of portraiture, mainly of women. I'd call it social documentary photography: about different social issues and about cultures. But mainly documentary.

The Journal: Are there photographers who've inspired you, or whose work you keep returning to?

Caden: For sure, a huge inspiration is Cindy Sherman. She's a contemporary artist and photographer, and a lot of her work goes against the norm. A big part of my photography, besides cultures, is female representation, and that's what draws me to her. In Greek mythology people talk about holding the head of Medusa, but Sherman creates work that makes women the center of focus, the power. She has this piece, Judith, where she depicts herself holding up the head of a biblical character. The way her work shows female empowerment is something I try to bring into my own photography.

The Journal: Walk me through your visual style; what is your process from taking a shot to editing it.

Caden: I try not to crop my photos too much, because capturing the moment in-frame, with a nice open composition, is really important to me. I usually edit in Lightroom and occasionally Photoshop. My work is in black and white, and for me the editing isn't only about eliminating distractions — it's about focusing in on the subject, on the people. There are almost always people in my photographs, and black and white strips away the distraction of color while giving the images a timeless look. You could imagine one of them being taken 60 years ago and it would still stand.

The Journal: Have you ever shot film, or only digital, and why?

Caden: I've never really shot film seriously. Right now I'm using a Sony digital mirrorless, and I used to shoot on a DSLR. Film's whole process is very different. With mirrorless or digital you can get a lot more shots in. It's definitely something I'd love to do in the future, but right now, with where my skills are, I don't think I'd do film justice yet.

The Journal: Do you plan your shots or go in with a vision, or is it more spontaneous?

Caden: I usually just go with the flow — it's more spontaneous. I'll have some image in my head of what I want, but it always ends up completely different once I'm actually in the place.

The Journal: Across your work, are there visual motifs you keep coming back to?

Caden: Light is a really big one. Playing with light and shadow has always been central for me. Light is this intangible thing — you can't touch it — but I use it to center my photographs and build my subjects around it. I think there's something poetic about using light and shadow as a medium.

The Journal: Can you go deeper on that — how light shapes the work?

Caden: It ties directly into why I use black and white. In color, you can saturate an image to create different tones, but in black and white you make the light itself come out more. How I photograph is really a matter of light and timing. It depends on the time of day I'm shooting and on how much light is in the area. My decision to treat light as a subject goes hand in hand with my decision to shoot in black and white.

The Journal: This series took you years. What kept bringing you back, and how did your approach change over time?

Caden: I started the series during COVID by reaching out to the community. At first they were pretty hesitant — nobody outside the Navajo Nation really came in and out, and I was an outsider who didn't look like them and was still a student, so I think they assumed I was coming to extract from their community. But they invited me back a second time, because their granddaughter was having a coming-of-age ceremony in the Navajo tradition and they wanted a photographer there. I was the only person they knew who could do it. I ended up going back two more times after that. My perspective changed a lot each time. I went during different seasons, and by the third and fourth visits they were much more receptive, so I could get more of those portrait shots and more motion than I could the first time.

The Journal: Did you have conversations before you started shooting? What did those look like?

Caden: I did — most of my conversations happened before I ever started shooting. I'd outline what I was trying to do and what I was trying to accomplish, because I really had to explain that I wasn't coming in to extract, which is what they'd experienced with outsiders for so long. I was there to actually showcase their community to the rest of the world, and I had to make that clear. I also had to make it clear that I planned to come back more than once — because if I'd only gone in once, it would look like I was just there to take the photos and leave. Those were the two main things I had to talk through with them.

The Journal: Which lens did you use for this, and any other gear — lighting, a tripod?

Caden: No tripods, no flash, nothing external. I just used my 24–70mm.

The Journal: How do you decide your camera settings, like shutter speed and aperture?

Caden: I was planning to get a few movement shots in this one, so I dropped into a low shutter speed for the photo of the woman moving with her hands quickly in motion. For most of the others I shoot in aperture priority, my f-stop is usually pretty low, and I keep my ISO on auto — which is nice, because it's one less thing to think about.

The Journal: Why black and white for a place as colorful as the canyons?

Caden: I actually went back and forth on it. Initially I had the whole series in color and was editing it that way, because it's such a visually vibrant place. But ultimately, because all of my images ended up having people in them — I didn't have any strict landscape shots. I wanted it to focus mainly on the people and get rid of the distractions that color would've brought.

The Journal: The series moves from the canyon wall to herding to shearing to the loom. Did you plan that order, or find it later?

Caden: I didn't plan the order at first, but when I went back and looked, it was a perfect sequence. It starts with herding the sheep, with the canyon as the backdrop; then shearing; then making and dyeing the wool; and then the actual finished products. So I really thought of it as a process afterward.

The Journal: You've said that to the Diné, weaving is more spiritual than art. Did that change what or how you shot?

Caden: At first I was mostly shooting the women's faces and hands, zooming in close. But as the weaver told me more about weaving and how important it is to their history, I started taking a lot more zoomed-out shots. If you look closely at the photographs, there's a small symbol at the very bottom that looks like a feather. Each woman in the community weaves a different one — it's called a spirit line, and in their religion it keeps their spirit from being trapped inside the rug. Once she shared that, I knew I had to zoom out and get that element in the frame.

The Journal: The final image is the weaver at the loom, framed almost like a portrait. Did you choose it as the closer, and why?

Caden: I intentionally made it the last photo, because it felt like the most powerful. She's not necessarily looking at you, but her body is positioned toward the audience in a way that makes her look powerful. If I could choose one photo from the whole series, it would be that one. It personifies her entire spirit as a weaver. The whole process of taking these photos was ultimately to get to that moment, where she invited me into her hut and allowed me to photograph her weaving, which is a really sacred thing for someone in the Navajo Nation to allow.

The Journal: Was there a day you stopped feeling like a visitor in their community?

Caden: I felt the least like a visitor — the most like part of their family — when they invited me into the Hogan, which is a small hut, for their granddaughter's coming-of-age ceremony. At first I definitely felt like an outsider, because most of the family kept their distance; in their traditions, outsiders aren't supposed to be at their ceremonies. But the ceremony went on for the entire night, and as the night went on and they let me start photographing, I felt the most like part of the family.

The Journal: Which photo is your favorite, and which was the hardest to get?

Caden: The hardest ones, maybe my least favorite, too — are the first two: the women herding the sheep in the canyon, and the horses and sheep moving off together. They're really visually similar, and both pretty zoomed out, and I kind of wish I'd gotten a closer shot of each. My favorite is definitely the closing one, the weaver at the loom.

The Journal: Did the families see the photos? What did they say?

Caden: There were a lot of portraits I took that I didn't include in the final set, and those were the main ones I sent to the families. I had a lot of photos of the youth, which is a theme for me, so I mostly sent them pictures of their kids and daughters — that's what they'd asked for. The response was really receptive. After I sent them, they basically said I should come back and keep photographing the community. Ultimately, images are a common ground everyone can understand, even when you don't share a language.

The Journal: Photography is an inherently reductive form. It flattens three-dimensional space and freezes moments that were never still. How do you keep from flattening a place into just images?

Caden: That's such a good question... I don't know if I'd thought about it in exactly those terms, but it's completely true. The way I try to do it is by pairing writing with my photography. I mainly do photography, but if you don't pair it with writing, you lose the context, and you lose the ability to bring that three-dimensional element back into the photo. Even the language we use for photography, we "shoot," we "capture," we "take," is extractive, and writing is one way I try to mitigate that.

The Journal: That's interesting, that the words "capture" and "take" can feel almost aggressive. Can you say more about that, and how your writing works alongside it?

Caden: Because I mainly photograph women and their portraits, this is something I really had to sit with — I never want my photography to be extractive, where I take from someone once and never come back. With a lot of the communities I work with, they invite me in, rather than me coming in and taking from them. Keeping words like shooting, taking, and capturing in mind, I try to portray my subjects the way they want to be portrayed, in the light they want to be seen in. I want to shed light on their experiences, but on their terms.

The Journal: How does it feel having these photos out in the world, and who do you most want to see them?

Caden: It feels a little daunting, honestly. But getting my photos out there was my biggest goal when I started. I wanted as many people as possible to see the work, and I never wanted my projects to just be kept for myself. The most beautiful thing about photography is that it can be interpreted anywhere in the world; it doesn't require a common language. Having this work out has actually expanded my perspective and made me want to shoot more portraiture. As for who I want to see it — definitely younger people, and especially younger girls. The outlets it's in right now aren't mostly young people, so I'd love for younger girls to be inspired by it.

The Journal: If someone knows nothing about Canyon de Chelly or the Diné, what do you want them to take from your photographs.

Caden: I want them to understand that the Navajo Nation is a matrilineal society — their legacy is traced through the mothers, and that's such a powerful part of their story. So often, Native cultures get overgeneralized as people who were conquered by Europeans, and that's a narrative I wanted to break down. It was really interesting to work with a mostly female society, because they're the powerhouses of the community. That female representation is what I find so empowering.