Stanley Greene went where he wasn’t supposed to go and told stories he wasn’t supposed to tell.

And for it, he received recognition and notoriety as he defied the expectations and norms of war and conflict photography, starting with who gets to do it. 

As a Black American photojournalist, he photographed places, people, and stories he was not expected to; the early days of the West Coast punk scene, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the rebel takeover of Russia's parliament, the wars in Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, uprising in Ukraine, and the conflict that defined his career, the decade-long wars in Chechnya.

Stanley broke through barriers to chart a path not only for himself and those who followed, but also contributed his way of seeing the people living in war – with compassion and moral outrage.  He imparted these values on many, mentoring hundreds of emerging photographers through workshops and alongside them in the field.

Stanley was born at Brooklyn Jewish Hospital and grew up in St. Albans, Queens and New Rochelle, in Westchester, New York. His parents and brother were working actors, but it would not be his path. His life as an artist began as a self-described “not very-good painter,” until he got some off the cuff advice from his girlfriend’s boss, American photojournalist Eugene Smith. Whatever he said gave Stanley a jolt big enough to drop his paintbrushes and pick up a camera. And that was it. 

In 1973, Stanley went off to Imageworks in Boston where he met David Godlis, the music photographer who would become Stanley’s lifelong friend.  In 1975, he enrolled in the San Francisco Art Institute. He was deep into the indie punk scene, the sound that would accompany him everywhere, always. He photographed it too, producing work that would be lost for decades until the debut of The Western Front in 2009 at Visa pour L’image in Perpignan, France.

France became Stanley’s adopted home in 1986.  He spent the first years documenting the love, sex and music of Parisian nightlife, inspired by Dutch photographer Ed van der Elsken.  

It was an ill-fated love affair that brought Stanley to Mauritania.  As he made his way to the Bamako airport, jilted by his lover, he was “invited” by a Tuareg militia member who spotted his cameras (hard to miss as he liked to carry quite a few), to join him to meet some friends.  And that encounter, according to Stanley, changed his life’s mission.  

In 1989, Stanley was on the ground as the Berlin Wall fell and made the photograph Kisses to All - a young woman in a tutu handing soldiers champagne. It was a fashion statement as well as a political one, signaling the emergence of a new world order, the breakup of the Soviet Union and new struggles for independence. 

Stanley joined the Paris-based Agence Vu in 1991.  Two years later, he was based in Moscow, where he was the only western journalist inside the White House during a coup attempt against Boris Yeltsin. He emerged with astounding images of the battle inside.  Two of these were awarded World Press Photo prizes.

In the early 1990s. Stanley covered war and famine in South Sudan, the aftermath of Union Carbide gas poisoning in India, the cholera epidemic in Zaire and Rwanda.

Stanley covered the war in Chechnya for the better part of ten years- and photographed the most horrific scenes of Russian brutality.  He was outraged by the West’s refusal to engage- and became an outspoken critic of the Russians, the Europeans and the Americans - with many appearances on French television. His work in Chechnya was published in the monograph, Open Wound: Chechnya 1994-2003 (Trolley 2003) and in Dans Les Montagnes Où Vivent Les Aigles (Actes Sud 1995). The work also appeared in Anna Politkovskaya’s book, A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya (2001).  It was this in-depth work that cemented Stanley Greene’s place as an important contributor to war photography.

Throughout the next fifteen years, Stanley covered conflict and its aftermath in Nagorno-Karabakh, Iraq, Sudan, Darfur, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Syria, Haiti and Lebanon. His work was published by major publications including Liberation, Paris Match, Time, The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, Le Nouvel Observateur.

Stanley’s major project in the U.S. “Those Who Fell Through the Cracks” was a collaboration with Dutch photographer and friend, Kadir van Lohuizen documenting the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast residents. The work was exhibited on the fifth anniversary of the devastating storm in a traveling exhibition mounted on and in a truck to reach affected communities.

In 2010, Stanley published Black Passport (Schilt), an autobiographical photo essay book, that quickly sold out in Europe and the U.S. The following year he was in Afghanistan to follow the impact of the heroin trade in local communities. And soon after, with support from the Getty Grant, he covered the business and impact of e-waste in Pakistan, Nigeria, China and India.

Stanley has received important recognitions including the Alicia Patterson Fellowship (1998), the W. Eugene Smith Award (2004), the Prix International Planète Albert Kahn (2011) the Aftermath Project Grant (2013)and five World Press Photo awards. He presented the Sem Presser keynote lecture at the 2017 World Press Photo Award Festival. 

Stanley was a founding member of the international photo agency, NOOR.  He passed away in Paris, France on May 19, 2017.