Brad Vest is a photographer based in Memphis, Tennessee, where he is on staff at The Commercial Appeal. His work aims to take deep looks at stories from a community level. While earning his B.S. in natural resources and environmental sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his M.A. in visual communication from Ohio University, he interned at a number of newspapers across the country, from the Hutchinson News in Kansas to the New York Times, as well as National Geographic.
In 2011, he was named College Photographer of the Year and was honored by the Alexia Foundation for World Peace and Time LightBox's Next Generation Photographer award. The following year his work on a family struggling with the effects of addiction in Appalachian West Virginia earned Cliff Edom's New America Award from the National Press Photographers Association. Most recently, he was named the 2015 Newspaper Photographer of the Year by Pictures of the Year International.
He grew up in DeKalb, Illinois, home of the barbie crow. He explores the American South alongside his partner-in-crime, photographer Andrea Morales, from Memphis, where they live with their two cats.