This feature is part of CULTURED‘s 2026 Young Photographers list. This year’s list spotlights 14 artists aged 30 or younger from around the globe who are united by a relentless curiosity and an understanding that the photographer’s most important job is identifying what deserves to be seen.
AGE: 26
BASED IN: New York
The Staten Island native Ben Jastremski’s portraits are as rich and stylish as they are confrontational. His subjects stare confidently down the photographer’s lens. Who could expect anything less of a New Yorker? This year, Jastremski took his practice on the road, traveling to Naples to work on a series about his family’s Italian heritage.
What questions does your work ask?
What it means to be seen, especially within a queer existence, where being seen has never been a simple or safe thing. There is beauty in the tension between vanity and the mundane, between the desire to be noticed and the rawness of what’s revealed when you are.
Who do you make photographs for?
My younger gay self, who always dreamed of being an artist. Growing up in a conservative environment where it wasn’t okay to be different, every image I make is the permission I was never given. I also make it for the people who stand in front of the camera and trust me to capture them. Many of them are searching for the same thing.
What’s the craziest situation you’ve shot in?
Two Russian men, a wedding anniversary, a neighborhood I had never explored despite living in New York my whole life—everything about it was unfamiliar. They treated me not as a hired photographer but as a guest, and that changed everything. When someone invites you in, you see things differently. You are present in a way that can be felt in the images.
What do you want to do more of?
Growing up in a middle-class suburban American environment never felt particularly inspiring to me until recently. My generation inherited a very different country than our parents did, yet I find myself unexpectedly nostalgic for the version of the American Dream we were raised on, the one that was sold to us before we were old enough to question it.
Meet more of CULTURED‘s 2026 Young Photographers:
Photographer Elijah Chukwuka Mogoli Captures a Disappearing Brooklyn
How Playing Sports Shaped Sofia Kayumova’s Approach to Photography
Photographer Alec Dai Once Shot a Series Naked, in a Basement, Under a ‘Weird Portrait of Jesus’
Many Photographers Have Been Nominated for a Pulitzer. This One Was Nominated for a Grammy.
Photographer Arielle Gray Wants Her Subjects to Be Unafraid of Softness
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