Modern-day superheroes provide a lifeline to Silicon Valley’s unhoused
Written by Robert Browman / MediaStorm
In the shadow of Silicon Valley’s booming technology industry, a growing number of people remain out in the cold.
Skyrocketing housing prices and an astronomical cost of living in America’s hub of innovation have pushed many onto the streets, straining policymakers to find solutions to a homelessness problem that directly, or indirectly, impacts everyone in the community.
While homelessness is not a new issue, it continues to grow at an alarming rate across the country, reaching record numbers in 2024.
More than 771,000 Americans were living without permanent shelter in the United States in 2024, up 18% from 2023 and more than 30% from 2022, according to a recent Department of Housing and Urban Development report.
The department says multiple factors are contributing to these historically high numbers.
“Our worsening national affordable housing crisis, rising inflation, stagnating wages among middle and lower income households, and the persisting effects of systemic racism have stretched homelessness services systems to their limits,” it wrote in the report.
The problem is impossible to miss in California, where HUD found an estimated 187,000 people living on the streets in 2024, more than anywhere else in the country.
Even at the epicenter of technological innovation, amidst massive corporate profits and personal wealth, a solution remains elusive to help those who lack the most basic of human needs.
San Jose, which is California’s third largest city and home to Silicon Valley, had 6,340 people experiencing homelessness in 2023, the fourth largest number of unhoused citizens per capita in the country, according to a San Jose Spotlight report.
It is amidst this growing humanitarian crisis that two modern-day superheroes, Batman of San Jose and Crimson Fist, have found their mission.
They work anonymously in costume to provide a lifeline to those who sleep without shelter on San Jose’s sidewalks, camp in tents along the Guadalupe River or retreat to the subterranean darkness of the city’s storm drain tunnel system.
The pair spends hours distributing water, food and other supplies to those in need, often at their own expense, believing it’s critical during a crisis to recognize one another’s humanity and to be of service.
“When resources are good and I have the finances to get stuff, I'll do pretty much anything,” Batman of San Jose said. “I'll get people tents, I'll get people shelters, I'll get people medical supplies.”
The duo have witnessed how devastating it is for people to live on the streets, and they have watched as the social and economic issues that fuel the crisis have become more pervasive.
“More and more of us are becoming poor and unhoused every single day,” Crimson Fist said. “But those people aren't the problem. They're the ones experiencing the problem.”
Extended Interviews
The subjects in this playlist represent a spectrum of voices involved in the homelessness issue – those providing aid, experts on the issue, business owners in the community, a politician working to craft solutions and those who are currently unhoused.
These extended interviews allow them to express their complete thoughts on the topics they care most about and provide full transparency in our reporting process.
A rising tide of conditions
The causes of homelessness vary widely, according to experts, and include broadly-intersecting issues such as limited services for the mentally ill, low income, lack of affordable housing, domestic violence, racial inequality, and others.
Although these issues are present in broader society, they stand as contributing factors to homelessness and are experienced at far greater rates by the unhoused.
Although 6% of the population in the U.S. suffers from a serious mental health issue, the rate is three times higher in the unhoused. And while Schizophrenia affects only 1% of the general population, nearly 20% of those experiencing homelessness suffer from it, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
For many citizens, witnessing people with mental health issues on the street causes fear and results in detachment or hostility.
For Batman of San Jose and Crimson Fist, the commonly-held belief that people suffering from mental health and related substance abuse issues are all dangerous is something that needs to be challenged.
“They're a victim just as much as anybody else in this, if not the most important victim here,” Batman of San Jose said. “The fact that policymakers refuse to acknowledge that and instead jump to the stereotypes, and perpetuate the stereotypes simply because of public pressure, is very, very shortsighted.”
For many, the path to becoming unhoused is poverty and lack of affordable housing options, an intersectional crisis that continues to deteriorate across the country.
“The typical American worker has seen little to no growth in his or her weekly wages over the past three decades,” according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. “Too little income combined with the dwindling availability of low-cost housing leaves many people at risk for becoming homeless.”
According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, an estimated 11 million households now spend at least half of their income on housing, leaving them dangerously at risk of becoming homeless.
The life stories the unhoused tell reinforce how dire the consequences of financial uncertainty can be.
“I was a salon worker for a while. I used to make really good money. COVID hit and we weren't prepared,” Tina Cuevas, who lives in a tent along the Guadalupe River, said. “We did Airbnb and hotels and we just really tried and really struggled. When the money was gone, it was gone, you know?“
This problem is particularly acute in San Jose, which is reportedly home to approximately half the world’s tech industry billionaires and has such a high cost of living that Chapman University listed it as the fourth most unaffordable city in the English speaking world in its 2024 Demographia International Housing Affordability report.
Experts say that the cost of housing is so high in the area that even the attempts to provide affordable housing using low-income tax credits are rendered unaffordable.
“The amount of rent is set at 80% area median income,” Tristia Bauman, Directing Attorney of Housing at the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley, said. “But in an area where area median income is incredibly high, our economic success renders even our affordable housing programs less effective than they could be.”
Batman of San Jose and Crimson Fist know well from their interactions with the unhoused that one unlucky health crisis or loss of employment can lead to crisis.
“Most of us are living somewhere close to the poverty line at this point,” Crimson Fist said. “It's very easy to think that you can't become homeless, but the reality of it is that it's very, very possible. And it happens to people every single day.”
Slideshow
Batman of San Jose, 23, and Crimson Fist, 39, photographed in the storm drain tunnels under San Jose, CA. Both belong to a group called BASH (Bay Area Super Heroes) and do outreach and activism work with the unhoused and homeless communities in the Bay Area.
Batman of San Jose introduces himself, describes what he does and why he was drawn to the Batman character.
This slideshow provides an intimate look as Batman of San Jose and Crimson Fist conduct outreach to the unhoused community on San Jose’s streets, along its river and in its storm drain tunnels.
Bryan Meltz photographed the duo as they got into costume in preparation for their work, as they handed out supplies and offered safety and support for those in need while the pair was documented for Lights in the Shadows.
Domestic Violence
A tragic and leading cause of homelessness for women and children is domestic and sexual abuse.
“Among homeless mothers with children, more than 80 percent previously experienced domestic violence,” the National Center for Children in Poverty reported in a 2009 study.
And as many as 57% of unhoused women reported that fleeing domestic violence was the immediate cause of their homelessness, according to a summary report published by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services in 2016.
Many victims trying to escape abuse have nowhere to go and too often end up unhoused and seeking shelter on the streets, sometimes with their children.
Approximately 11% of the beds in emergency shelters, transitional housing and safe havens in 2022 were targeted to survivors of domestic violence and their families, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
Sadly, being unhoused provides none of the security fleeing victims need, as domestic abuse on the streets is all too common and often goes unreported.
Batman of San Jose and Crimson Fist have experienced this issue firsthand in their interactions with Gretchen, a 47-year-old woman who has been unhoused since 2013.
The pair helped Gretchen find food and a safe place to sleep in July 2024 after she was beaten for the third time by her boyfriend.
“I'm just scared that if he finds me, he's gonna hurt me even more,” Gretchen said. “ I'm just hoping that someone can help me.”
Although there are emergency shelters in the city set up specifically for women experiencing violence, Gretchen said she was unable to find an available place to stay when she needed it most.
Her experience is not unique. Other women living on the street say the well meaning support provided by emergency programs can’t meet the demand.
According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, approximately 85% of its callers in 2022 had unmet housing requests, and emergency shelters were the top need of domestic violence survivors.
“I've been in a lot of situations, and they promise that, oh, if you're attacked or you're hurt as a woman, that they have safe havens for you,” Cuevas said. “But they actually just give you a phone number to call, and there's no room there.”
Map
- 360 Experiences
- Adam West's Batman
- Andrea and David
- Batman of San Jose hands out supplies
- Batman of San Jose watches over the city
- Batman of San Jose talks about Columbus Park
- Business impacts and solutions
- Downtown cats and donated food
- Guadalupe River, San Jose
- How people become homeless
- Items left on a park bench
- Life after homelessness
- Life In Columbus Park
- Mayor on the homelessness issue
- PATH to housing
- San Jose City Hall
- San Pedro Square street closure
- St. James Park sweep notice
- Participants
This map includes locations related to Lights in the Shadows, including spots where 360 experiences were captured by Shaminder Dulai. Home locations of the film team across the country are also included.
Click on an icon at a map location to learn more about it, or use the index on the left to explore the items by topic.
Solutions and Criminalization
Homelessness is one of the largest and most visible social challenges of our time, impacting nearly every community in the country.
“You're not just harmed because you have to see visibly unhoused people and it causes you to feel some form of distress,” Bauman said. “You're harmed because our systems are wasting our money.”
Despite public and political pressure to solve it, the problem has not only persisted, it has gotten worse.
In response, officials seeking to win political points or defect accountability often try to move the problem out of view by demolishing homeless encampments.
Those providing aid to the unhoused see this as a form of criminalization that exacerbates the problem, punishes those in crisis and removes the safety that living in a group provides.
“When you sweep people out of encampments and you just send them out into the world, no one can find them. People can't get them the resources that they need,” Crimson Fist said. “Getting swept is a full reset. It takes you right back to square one.”
Still, policymakers continue to seek to displace those who have nowhere else to sleep but public spaces to appease the public.
On June 28, 2024, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in the case City of Grants Pass, Oregon vs. Johnson that communities could impose fines or jail residents who violate bans on public camping.
To many, the ruling appears to pave the way for the criminalization of homelessness, giving authorities broad power to tear down camps and jail those they wish.
While there have been encampment sweeps in San Jose, Mayor Matt Mahan said he believes they alone are not the answer.
“We have to have places for people to go,” he said. “Simply abating encampments and shuffling people around the city at great expense to taxpayers, and with great suffering for those already on our streets, is not particularly productive.”
Like many experts and officials, the mayor believes a more effective and lasting solution must address key causes and include affordable housing for those who are falling through the economic cracks.
Those types of solutions, however, are often met with resistance from tax payers and business owners, many who are frustrated by what they see on the streets and want it out of their neighborhoods.
“You can't focus on your business when you have homeless people either poking into your business, asking for things, stealing things, breaking windows, stealing your car,” San Jose business owner Marco Najarro said. “Sympathy? I've lost it. I have no more sympathy.”
Even when funding is allocated, enacted programs tend to make a small dent in a very large problem and take a long time to implement.
Experts say the cost of land, high interest rates and rising insurance rates are making it increasingly expensive to build and run low-income housing.
“We're taking five, six years to build an affordable housing development that might deliver 100 new units of deed restricted affordable housing,” the Mayor Mahan said.
He said the cost to build each unit could exceed $1 million.
Homeless populations in 2023
Compassionate Response
The complexity of the problem and the difficulty in finding impactful solutions has left some believing homelessness is an unavoidable consequence of our social and economic systems that can be managed, moved out of view, but not addressed in any substantial way.
Others, like Bauman, believe things can be accomplished if we shift our collective social values.
“We can decide that we care about human rights,” she said. “Stop treating housing as a commodity, but as something that we recognize to be foundational to the health of not just individuals, but to communities.”
Batman of San Jose agrees.
“If we consider life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to be the utmost of importance in America, then housing should be a human right,” he said. “Putting people in housing is by far the cheapest way of solving homelessness.”
While that shift in our society’s values may eventually provide long-term support for solutions to the large-scale problem, the crisis on the street today is pressing, and people are suffering.
Batman of San Jose and Crimson Fist have decided their answer to that is to take direct, compassionate action to help those in need.
“I'm seeing what's happening, and I'm seeing how it affects other human beings,” Batman of San Jose said. “It's really forced me to look at myself and say, ‘I'm not comfortable with what I'm seeing in myself and my community. How can I change that?’”
By embracing ways to be of service, the pair provide much more than the water or food they hand out and the safety they give in a moment of crisis.
By treating their unhoused neighbors with care and respect, they offer dignity and hope for those who remain in the margins of our society and way of life.
Although Batman of San Jose and Crimson Fist are well-known in their community, especially among the unhoused whom they call friends, they have chosen to do their work without revealing their true identities, hoping their actions will be seen purely as benefit to the larger community, rather than themselves. And they know dressing in costume helps raise awareness about the issue.
“It's literally just clickbait advertising,” Batman of San Jose said.
They have been covered by the press and that has resulted in greater attention to their mission and donations.
Although their approach is unique, they hope they inspire others into action and believe everyone can be of help in their own way.
“I would just encourage anybody who is on the fence about it to just know, even if your impact is small, it's still an impact,” Batman of San Jose said. “You're chipping away at the massive wall that is a societal problem, societal injustice.”
The superheroes believe that individuals caring for one another is a significant way to shift the entire system towards greater good.
“The small things that we do to help each other, they add up in this world. Even if it's a simple little thing that seems insignificant, it's going to help somebody,” Crimson Fist said. “ And helping people makes a difference, no matter what.”
Behind the Scenes
A behind-the-scenes film documenting the making of Lights in the Shadows, which was produced by nine participants during the weeklong 2024 MediaStorm Storytelling Workshop in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Lights in the Shadows follows Batman of San Jose and Crimson Fist, two modern-day superheroes who provide outreach and hope to San Jose's unhoused community.
MediaStorm's Online Training
Updated with nine making-of modules from our latest film Lights in the Shadows, our MediaStorm Online Training provides essential tools and techniques proven to enhance your craft.
Led by our award-winning team of producers, editors, and cinematographers, these modules offer a behind-the-scenes look at MediaStorm's approach to making meaningful films.
Credits
Made Possible By
There’s a lot to consider when pricing used camera gear: age and condition, advances in technology, and what other visual storytellers are looking for. Our pricing is based on millions of data points and years of camera and pricing experience, and adjusts for market changes and seasonal trends. Get a free instant quote and find out exactly what your gear is worth today.MPB offers the most accurate and competitive prices for buyers and sellers in the U.S. Learn more at MPB.com.
Get Involved
- Contribute to Batman of San Jose’s homeless relief fund
- Join Batman of San Jose’s Patreon
- Support Crimson Fist on Ko-Fi
- BASH (Bay Area Superheros) Outreach Wish List
- Apply to Join BASH (Bay Area Superheros)
- Volunteer at Sacred Hearts Community Service
- Support LifeMoves
Find Help
- City of San Jose Homeless Services
- San Jose Family Shelter
- Santa Clara County: Find a Shelter
- Home First
- Find Local Shelter & Housing
- U.S. Homeless and Housing Resource Center
- National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-SAFE (7233)
- National Human Trafficking Resource Center: 1-888-373-7888
- National Alliance to End Homelessness
- National Coalition for the Homeless
- National Low Income Housing Coalition
- Law Foundation of Silicon Valley
Homelessness in San Jose & California
- San Jose residents hope city commits to homeless ‘no return zone’
- Private Companies in California Reap More than $100m to Sweep Homeless Camps
- Local News Matters: ‘It’s not fair at all’: San Jose sweeps Columbus Park after homeless individuals return
- Revealed: how companies made $100m clearing California homeless camps
- San Jose Spotlight: San Jose selects first homeless sleeping site
- National Homelessness Law Center Condemns Supreme Court Decision, Demands Real Solutions to Homelessness
- CalMatters: 6 myths about homelessness in California
- Local organizations that help people experiencing homelessness in San Jose, CA
- San Jose Spotlight: San Jose has 4th highest homeless population in U.S.
- San Jose Spotlight: South San Jose tiny homes project long overdue
- NY Times The Daily: A Controversial Crackdown on Homeless Encampments
- NYTimes: Newsom Orders California Officials to Remove Homeless Encampments
- Politico: Gavin Newsom issues order to clear homeless encampments on California state land
- San Jose Spotlight: ‘Where do I go?’: San Jose homeless residents living along creeks dread future
- San Jose Spotlight: San Jose’s housing plan projected to be more costly
- City of San Jose Homeless Reports
Statistics
- PEW: How Housing Costs Drive Levels of Homelessness
- NY Times: How We Unintentionally Created the Affordable Housing Crisis
- CNN: These cities are now so expensive they’re considered ‘impossibly unaffordable’
- HUD’s 2024 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report to Congress
- Women and Children Experiencing Homelessness Fact Sheet
- Chapman University’s Demographia International Housing Affordability Report
- Summary: HUD Releases January 2024 Point-In-Time Count Report
- Altrata’s World Ultra Wealth Report 2023
- Haylen Group: Unveiling the Astonishing Housing Market of San Jose
- U.S. Health & Human Services Dept: Domestic Violence and Homelessness: Statistics
- National Center for Children in Poverty: Homeless Children and Youth, Causes and Consequences
Media Coverage of Batman of San Jose & Crimson Fist
- Metro Silicon Valley: B.A.S.H. Makes a Difference for the Bay Area Homeless
- NBC Bay Area: Silicon Valley Superhero: Meet the Teen Who's Shining the Bat-Signal on Homelessness
- RIT: RIT’s student Batman helps homeless on both coasts
- Mercury News: For homeless residents in San Jose, this 19-year-old is a true superhero
- SJ Today: 15 questions with local activist + volunteer Batman of San José
- San Jose's own Batman raising awareness and donating to homeless
- Invisible People: 80 years old and homeless veteran in Los Angeles needs help
- NBC 10 Boston: Silicon Valley Superhero: Meet the Teen Who's Shining the Bat-Signal on Homelessness
- ABC News: South Bay teen dressed as Batman brings relief to homeless residents
Connect on Social Media
- Instagram: Batman of San Jose
- TikTok: Batman of San Jose
- X: Baman of San Jose
- Facebook: Batman Of San José
- ‘Reddit: Batman of San Jose
- Instagram: Crimson Fist
- X: Crimson Fist
- Facebook: Crimson Fist
- BASH (Bay Area Superheros)
- X: Tristia Bauman
- X: Mayor Matt Mahan
- Instagram: Mayor Matt Mahan
- Community Got Us
Related Stories
Annual Homelessness Assessment Reports
HUD’s 2024 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report to Congress
Summary: HUD Releases January 2024 Point-In-Time Count Report
City of San Jose Homeless Reports
San Jose Spotlight: San Jose has 4th highest homeless population in U.S.
CNN: These cities are now so expensive they’re considered ‘impossibly unaffordable’
Chapman University’s Demographia International Housing Affordability Report
Altrata’s World Ultra Wealth Report 2023
National Alliance to End Homelessness
National Coalition for the Homeless
National Low Income Housing Coalition
Haylen Group: Unveiling the Astonishing Housing Market of San Jose
U.S. Health & Human Services Dept: Domestic Violence and Homelessness: Statistics
Women and Children Experiencing Homelessness Fact Sheet
National Center for Children in Poverty: Homeless Children and Youth, Causes and Consequences
Upcoming Workshops
One Day Master Class
The MediaStorm One Day Master Class provides a general, yet precise, overview of documentary video and multimedia storytelling approaches. MediaStorm founder Brian Storm will walk you through specific examples as well as proven tips to improve your interviewing, editing and distribution techniques.
These are the upcoming one day workshop dates:
Methodology Master Class
The MediaStorm Methodology Master Class gives participants a chance to look inside the workings of a successful film and interactive production company, while taking them step-by-step through both the creative and business aspects of digital storytelling.
Founder Brian Storm will share MediaStorm’s workflow and storytelling methods and discuss essential elements of project organization and storytelling concepts.
You can attend the workshop in Los Gatos, CA in person or online via Zoom.
Upcoming date:
- December 12 - 14, 2025 - (Deadline to apply is Nov 1)
MediaStorm Storytelling Workshop Stories
A family is determined to give their disabled son a whole and vital life. In the midst of a great burden, one small child – with a seemingly endless supply of love – is the blessing that holds a family together.
Virginia Gandee's brilliant red hair and dozen tattoos belie the reality of this 22-year-old's life. Inside her family's Staten Island trailer her caregiving goes far beyond the love she has for her daughter.
For Walter Backerman, seltzer is more than a drink. It’s the embodiment of his family. As a third generation seltzer man, he follows the same route as his grandfather. But after 90 years of business, Walter may be the last seltzer man.
Using humor and a love of fantasy, "The Amazing Amy" Harlib connects with audiences through performing strenuous yoga-based contortion acts in New York City.
Benny is a “certified” garbologist. He collects what others throw away. Benny is also at war with his family. Here is a man sharing a house with his wife but living as a stranger. This is a household on the edge.
Jay Singer has been in love with one Brooklyn neighborhood his entire life. He grew up there, pined for it when he was forced to leave and returned when he couldn’t stand to be away. “Coney Island Jay” really loves Coney Island.
Tim Obert has been a commercial fisherman since he was 12. But regulations aimed at saving whales and salmon in California leave him struggling to find balance between his dream, his family’s needs and the industry he loves.
Kryssy Kocktail grew up in troubled family and, as an adult, followed the mythic path of joining the circus. Amid the lights and energy of the Coney Island Circus Sideshow, she has found something that she never dreamed would be hers.
One evening, David Sheets read a story about a new basketball arena proposed for his neighborhood. Then he realized the plans were drawn right over his house. Hold Out is the story of a few neighbors who haven't been very easily dislodged.
Joe Soll has spent half of his life searching for his birth parents, in the process he uncovered a mystery that’s haunted him for years.
Diana Ortiz spent over half her life in prison for a crime she committed when she was a teenager. Now 45, she has turned her life around and works to help other inmates rebuild their lives. Exodus is her story.
Additional Training Products
MediaStorm's award-winning team of producers and cinematographers lead online training videos with lessons learned from their experience producing films and training groups and organizations around the world.
Developed over seven years and more than 100 projects, our downloadable post-production workflow covers every phase of editing, from organizing assets through outputting final projects and archiving.
Available for iPad on iTunes, the MediaStorm Field Guide outlines fundamental concepts for gathering multimedia content in the field for documentary films.
MediaStorm Project Showcase
Once teetering on the brink of extinction, the Santa Catalina Island Fox made a dramatic recovery. Its resurgence marks one of the greatest conservation success stories in United States history.
In the shadow of Silicon Valley’s booming technology industry, a growing number of people remain out in the cold. Skyrocketing housing prices in America’s hub of innovation have pushed many onto the streets, straining policymakers to find solutions to a homelessness problem that impacts everyone in the community.
This page recognizing Zora J Murff for ICP’s 2023 Infinity Award for Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism features a film about his life, a slideshow of his projects and extra clips of his thoughts about his work and motivation.
Sebastião Salgado says "a good picture, a fantastic picture, you do in a fraction of a second, but to arrive to do this picture, you must put your life in there."
Esther Horvath has sent questions to the universe and she has received answers. She found her calling to tell visual stories that show the full research story behind our climate data.
See photographer Acacia Johnson’s growth from her earliest explorations of Alaskan landscapes to a National Geographic cover for a documentary project among indigenous people of the Arctic.
Sir Don McCullin never intended to become a photographer. He found it hard to believe he’d ever escape the poverty of North London. But a spur of the moment photograph launched McCullin into a career spanning 50 years in photography.
As the U.S. prepares for the final drawdown of soldiers from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Soledad O’Brien and MediaStorm take an intimate look at two veterans as they struggle with the transition from war to home.
Writer Zadie Smith pays homage to photographer Deana Lawson in the artist’s first Monograph for Aperture.
As a formerly incarcerated person, Michael struggled for work, and found purpose in being a husband, father, and activist. But 7 years since his release from prison, the cost of Michael’s activism is evident.
Benny is a “certified” garbologist. He collects what others throw away. Benny is also at war with his family. Here is a man sharing a house with his wife but living as a stranger. This is a household on the edge.
Photographer Amber Bracken recognized something deeper than a protest was afoot when hundreds of tribes gathered at the Standing Rock reservation in opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline.
How does the death of a child change a parent? How does the death of a parent change a child? How do these moments change us as we develop and grow further away from who we were as children?
Maurice Berger–cultural historian, and columnist for the New York Times’ Race Stories–has spent his career studying and teaching racial literacy through visual literacy.
Japan’s Disposable Workers examines the country’s employment crisis: from suicide caused by overworking, to temporary workers forced by economics to live in internet cafes, and the elderly who wander a town in search of shelter and food.
Karl Ove Knausgaard is the celebrated author of a massive six-volume autobiography. But Knausgaard remains confused by the attention. This is a portrait of a man who has achieved massive success yet still considers himself unworthy.
Michael Thomasson has devoted his life to video games. It’s been his passion and his obsession for more than three decades. He owns over 11,000 unique game titles for more than 100 different systems.
A film about Michael Christopher Brown for the 2017 ICP Infinity Awards.
The Long Night, a feature film by Tim Matsui and MediaStorm, gives voice and meaning to the crisis of minors who are forced and coerced into the American sex trade.
Jonathan Harris and Greg Hochmuth have a complicated relationship with the internet and have worked together to develop an artwork that explored some of the more difficult consequences of what it means to live with the internet.
In 1977, Robyn Davidson walked 1,700 miles across the Australian outback. National Geographic sent Rick Smolan to photograph her perilous journey—a trek that tested and transformed them, forming an immutable bond that continues to this day.
Once at the center of the U.S. economy, the family farm now drifts at its edges. In Iowa, old-time farmers try to hang on to their way of life, while their young push out to find their futures elsewhere. Driftless tells their stories.
The American family farm gives way to a subdivision - a critical cultural shift across the U.S. Common Ground is a 27-year document of this transition, through the Cagwins and the Grabenhofers, two families who love the same plot of land.
For Walter Backerman, seltzer is more than a drink. It’s the embodiment of his family. As a third generation seltzer man, he follows the same route as his grandfather. But after 90 years of business, Walter may be the last seltzer man.
Larry Fink has spent over 40 years photographing jazz musicians, wealthy manhattanites, his neighbors, fashion models, and the celebrity elite. His archive is a thoughtful collection of American history, and Fink’s experience of it.
LaToya Ruby Frazier’s body of work “The Notion of Family” examines the impact of the steel industry and the health care system on the community and her family. Collaborating with her mother and grandmother, she uses her family as a lens to view the past, present and future of the town.
Tomas Van Houtryve wants there to be a permanent visual record of the dawn of the drone age, the period in American history when America started outsourcing their military to flying robots. In order to create this record, Van Houtryve sent his own drone into American skies.
Evgenia Arbugaeva was born in the magical town of Tiksi, Russia. This barren, arctic landscape influenced Arbugaeva in almost every aspect of her dreamlike photography.
Surviving the Peace: Laos takes an intimate look at the impact of unexploded bombs left over from the Vietnam war in Laos and profiles the dangerous, yet life saving work, that MAG has undertaken in the country.
A family is determined to give their disabled son a whole and vital life. In the midst of a great burden, one small child – with a seemingly endless supply of love – is the blessing that holds a family together.
Inspired by the photographs of the Farm Security Administration growing up, Lynn Johnson has spent nearly 35 years as a photojournalist working for LIFE, National Geographic, Sports Illustrated and various foundations.
Resetting the Table takes a unique, personal look at the impact Starbucks’ Create Jobs for USA program has had on the American Mug & Stein pottery facility in East Liverpool, Ohio.
Hungry Horse captures the spirit of renewal, peace and serenity through stunning landscapes and intimate oral histories.
Using humor and a love of fantasy, "The Amazing Amy" Harlib connects with audiences through performing strenuous yoga-based contortion acts in New York City.
In many countries, girls as young as eight are forced into marriage by their families, culture and economic situation. This practice destroys their chance at education leading to tragic results.
Surreal and mysterious, North Korea was a black hole to outsiders wanting a glimpse of the country. That all changed in 2012, when AP photographer David Guttenfelder led the opening of the bureau's newest office inside the North Korea.
Virginia Gandee's brilliant red hair and dozen tattoos belie the reality of this 22-year-old's life. Inside her family's Staten Island trailer her caregiving goes far beyond the love she has for her daughter.
Based on 14 trips to Afghanistan between 1994 and 2010, A Darkness Visible: Afghanistan is the work of photojournalist Seamus Murphy. His work chronicles a people caught time and again in political turmoil, struggling to find their way.
In Rwanda, in 1994, Hutu militia committed a bloody genocide, murdering one million Tutsis. Many of the Tutsi women were spared, only to be held captive and repeatedly raped. Many became pregnant. Intended Consequences tells their stories.
To those who serve in the armed forces, what is the aftereffect of war? The Marlboro Marine is photographer Luis Sinco's portrait of Marine Corporal James Blake Miller, whom he met in Iraq. For Miller, coming home has been its own battle.
Zakouma National Park is one of the last places on earth where elephants still roam by the thousands. In a land where poachers will slaughter the huge animals for their tusks alone, it takes armed guards to keep them safe.
Kingsley's Crossing is the story of one man's dream to leave the poverty of life in Africa for the promised land of Europe. We walk in his shoes, as photojournalist Olivier Jobard accompanies Kingsley on his uncertain and perilous journey.
Collaborate With Us
The MediaStorm Platform is an advanced video platform that extends the user experience beyond linear video to include the interactive capabilities of the Internet.
Powered by the MediaStorm Platform
The MediaStorm Platform is an advanced video platform that extends the user experience beyond linear video to include the interactive capabilities of the Internet.
Follow MediaStorm
Copyright 2025 MediaStorm, LLC | Terms & Conditions | Privacy | Contact