Intimate images: Joni Kabana

Alumna Joni Kabana is a visual artist and storyteller who embodies the adventuresome Bobcat spirit while traveling the world as a professional photographer. Kabana, who earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology in 1979, captured the portrait of author Cheryl Strayed for the jacket of the author’s best-selling memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. Kabana’s recent work with Mercy Corps, a humanitarian initiative, in India, Nepal, and rural hospitals in Ethiopia garnered her American Society of Media Photographers’ “Best of” designations.

Watch and listen as Kabana recounts stories surrounding five of her documentary-style photographs, selected by ohiowomen staff and student writers and designers at OHIO’s Advancement Communication & Marketing.

Kabana is currently working on magazine, corporate, advertising, and personal projects as well as for non-governmental organizations to stretch her influence across the globe. Her subjects range from rodeo cowboys to people waiting for medical assistance in Ethiopia. Each image she captures represents a story waiting to be told.