About David Shankbone

I’m a writer and photographer in New York. I see information as art, and there is an art to information.

Fascinated by shared resources, I undertook a public Creative Commons project on Wikipedia, where my photography illustrates over 4,000 articles: from Brooklyn to Betty White; transvestites to Taylor Swift; the President of the ACLU to the President of Rwanda; the Colorado Rocky Mountains to the hills of southern Lebanon.

I spent four years to create a body of high-value photography as a public resource. I had in mind small publishers, authors and educational institutions; but also blogs and the independent press. My images have been used by the New York Times, Last Call with Carson Daly, Vanity Fair and countless others.

Paul Auster, Salman Rushdie and David Shankbone

At a breakfast in New York with Paul Auster and Salman Rushdie.

Some recent CC portraits include the Time 100, the Tribeca Film Festival and Joan Jett.

On Wikinews, Wikipedia’s sister journalism project, I conducted over 40 interviews with global cultural leaders in the span of five months. The Columbia Journalism Review wrote an in-depth profile about it that you have to pay to read.

I’ve driven motorcycles across Cuba and Portugal, served the empire of a founding family of New York, camped in the Amazon, skydived over Italy, worked at Enron in London, lost myself in the armpit of Morocco, found myself in the Negev, studied en España, graduated CU-Boulder and attended Fordham Law School.

I’ve moved 33 times amongst 3 countries (US, GB and ES), 6 states (NJ, GA, CO, TX, PA, NY) and 17 cities. These are the good ole days. Happy endings never bore me.

Contact me: davidshankbone x gmail x com

I’m on Twitter

Click below to see 100 of my favorite portaits I took for the Creative Commons

Interview with David Shankbone, Hillel Mintz, IsraelTravelAndTours.com, June 2009

“For anyone who has not seen Israel, the reality does not match the perceptions we receive from the media narratives created about it. Even though religion is important to the country and its history, religiosity does not dominate the culture (after all, the country recognizes same-sex marriages and relationships, and gives gays and lesbians adoption rights).”

Photo Editing Israel’s Online Image, Sharon Udasin, Jewish Week, March 2009

Ideally, Shankbone said he’d like to end up at solar power plants in the Negev Desert or in a southern city like Eilat, because he spent most of his time up north during the previous trip. “I particularly like small towns, because my feeling is that anyone can come to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem,” Shankbone said.

The Wikinews Ace – Why Shimon Peres sat down with David Shankbone, Adam Rose, Columbia Journalism Review, January/February 2009 (subscription)

“One morning in December 2007, a law-school dropout named David Shankbone sat on a couch in Shimon Peres’s office in Jerusalem. He’d been invited into the Israeli president’s inner sanctum for an exclusive interview with the elder statesman. Peres reclined on a velvet chair next to Shankbone, nibbling cookies while he talked in his soporific baritone about the future of nanotechnology, the likelihood of a first strike against Iran, and why Israeli youth turned to drugs.”

Internet Bullying, Webcology, Jim Hedger, Webmaster Radio program

Broadcast radio program with hosts Jim Hedger and Dave Davies. Appeared with Lise Broer (Durova) to discuss my Brooklyn Rail article

In Conversation: David Shankbone with Colleen Asper, The Brooklyn Rail

“The subjects of his interviews have ranged from the President of Israel and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Shimon Peres, to the owners of an S&M dungeon. He has also worked with a wide range of authors, photographing the like of Jonathan Safran Foer and Mary Gaitskill, and interviewing Augusten Burroughs, Edmund White, and many others….”

Photo Finish, Time Out New York

Illustration by Samuel Ferri inspired by David Shankbone photograph of Miss Understood.

Your wiki entry counts, Cnaan Liphshiz, Haaretz

“The man who offed Santa seemed quite unrepentant after landing in Israel last week. David Shankbone, a leading editor for the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, came here at the invitation of the Foreign Ministry, which sought to give the 33-year-old rationalist a first-hand understanding of the country….”

Wikinews Gets Big Interview: Israeli President Shimon Peres, K.C. Jones, Information Week

“Wikinews has reached a milestone in its development.The citizen journalism news site received an invitation, along with more mainstream reporters, to meet with Israeli leaders, and its reporter was the first staffer to interview a head of state.”

WikiPeres, Itamar Eichner, Yedioth Aharonoth (English translation)

“For over an hour, Peres sat with one of the Wikipedia senior editors, David Shankbone. Shankbone, who came to Israel with a delegation of journalists, turned to the Israeli Consul for Media and Public Affairs in New York, David Saranga, and asked to schedule an interview with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Peres.”

Leading Wikipedia Editor to Visit Jerusalem, Herb Keinon, Jerusalem Post

“In an acknowledgement of the importance that the Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia has in shaping opinion, the Foreign Ministry is bringing one of its leading editors, David Shankbone, to Israel next week.”

Bloggers, You Might Wanna Thank David Shankbone (He’s Probably The Reason Your Blog Has Photos), Jim Acho, Sports Review Magazine

“David is a also a critically-acclaimed photographer–rapidly becoming NYC’s most famous. He shoots anything from a bum on the street to the highest profile of celebs. But what is unique is, of the thousands of images he owns, he puts them all on Wikipedia for free. Free license to those who wish to use for their stories, for their blogs, etc.”