Russel Albert Daniels is an independent documentary photographer and new media storyteller with a journalism and fine art education. He was born in the high desert valley of Salt Lake City, Utah. He calls himself a New Frontier Mutt: a rough blend of polygamist Mormon pioneers, a kidnapped Navajo servant, a beautiful Ho-Chunk maiden, French trapper blood, and Irish settlers.
In his teens he started an affaire de couer with a borrowed 35mm camera and a black and white darkroom where he began his dairstic obsession exploring self, memory, and environment.
These days he produces photo and video news stories, mini documentaries, portraits, and collaborates on civil justice projects, while obsessively recording life around. He also is a multimedia mentor to young native high school students at the Freedom Forum Crazy Horse Journalism Workshop at the Crazy Horse Memorial, South Dakota.
Russel has also worked at the Associated Press and a couple of mid-west newspapers. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Bay Citizen, and he contributes to Patch.com. His multimedia stories about Montana’s Indian Country have won him SPJ and Hearst Journalism Awards. He is a Freedom Forum Diversity Institute Scholar, during which he attended both the American Indian Journalism Institute and the Chips Quinn Scholar Program. He received a BA in journalism from the University of Montana.
