Saskia Keeley is an award-winning photojournalist, documentarian, peace activist, speaker, and the creator of photography workshops that bridge divides.

Accompagnateur 

Saskia leads photography workshops to bridge divides and foster healing. Co-created with a rabbi in the West Bank to facilitate dialogue between Palestinian and Israeli women, Saskia now uses these therapeutic activities and conversations to connect at-risk youth, incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people to themselves and others. Through the simple yet profound acts of looking and listening, participants unpack decades of fear and bias. The Accompagnateur Workshops guide participants to see members of different cultures and communities with clarity and compassion. They teach participants that the circumstances of their past need not define their future. With a camera and conversation, the workshops help shift the lens through which participants see themselves, empowering them to advance on their own terms.

Saskia uses photography as a tool for social justice, healing, and connection. Accompagnateur Workshops are facilitated in communities where they help create awareness and begin the work to redress ostracism and bias. They provide the opportunity to explore one’s voice, time to capture what is meaningful, and an audience of active listeners with whom to share intimate stories.

As a counselor, photographer, and workshop leader, Saskia’s skills enable people from marginalized communities to see themselves, the world they live in, and their opportunity to enact changes to improve their lives—for themselves and others.

Speaker

Saskia has presented her work at universities including Yale, Duke, Tufts, UCLA, Washington University, and the New York University Center for Global Affairs. Her photographs, and those of her participants, have been exhibited at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, the Centre des Arts in Geneva, UCLA, and B’nai Jeshurun in New York City.

Awards & Publications

Saskia was awarded the Art Award from the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program, which honors artists who contribute to conflict resolution and peacemaking through their creative expressions. Her work has been published in Newsday, The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, UCLA’s Daily Bruin, the Jewish Standard, and Women Across Frontiers. Saskia contributed a chapter to the e-book Beyond Sides: Toward Reconciliation, which was originally published as a chapter in an academic textbook, Intercultural and Interfaith Dialogues for Peacebuilding and Stability (IGI Global Press, 2019). Saskia’s chapter is a pragmatic account of how revelatory photography workshops between contested communities around the world can be.

Education

Saskia Bory Keeley is a Swiss photographer who was educated at the University of Geneva, Sotheby’s, and the New Academy for Art Studies in London. She also studied photography at the International Center of Photography in New York City. She is an Interspiritual Counselor (One Spirit Learning Alliance, NYC). Saskia has a Master of Arts in Transformational Leadership (Eastern Mennonite University at the Center of Justice and Peacebuilding)

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