Monty Marsh

Award-winning filmmaker, photojournalist, founder, and social impact advocate with 25 years of experience across identity, culture, and visual storytelling. Credentialed by the Obama 2008 Presidential Campaign, he photographed the Bloody Sunday commemoration in Selma, Alabama alongside Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, John Lewis, and Al Sharpton. His photography has appeared in Vogue.com, documenting the Washitaw Indians during Mardi Gras. He also served as lead photographer on an embedded CBS News assignment in Benin, West Africa, documenting child slavery. His independently produced bodies of work document Cuba under decades of embargo, the anti-war movement under President George W. Bush, and the lives of unhoused residents on the streets of Skid Row in Los Angeles.

A self-taught photographer, he studied Ansel Adams' Zone System, learning to visualize the final image before the shutter opens, controlling tonal range so that highlights and shadows land exactly as intended. He studied Richard Avedon's hyper-realism to understand human authenticity and the power of a photograph to reveal the full weight of a person's identity. That foundation shaped every frame that followed.

He is a self-taught filmmaker as well. He studied David Gordon Green, learning to let a scene breathe so an audience can settle inside it, an approach that shaped NOAH, a documentary told as a narrative through visual imagery and voice over. He studied Tom Tykwer for pacing, using music, movement, and editing to control how a story moves, techniques he deployed across commercials and music videos. His education continued on set, across more than 1,000 commercial campaigns working alongside A-list commercial directors and photographers with a firsthand view of every facet of production. He then founded Kindred Spirits Entertainment, directing and producing more than 50 projects across branded, documentary, and narrative formats. His film NOAH earned Best Screenwriting at the Diversity at Cannes Showcase, a screenwriting award for a documentary that validated the stylistic choice, along with the Spirit Award at the Brooklyn Film Festival and official selections across the festival circuit. He directed an adidas Originals spec film named one of AdAge's Top 5 Creative Ideas of the Week, the national Nissan Black History Month campaign featuring Jay Ellis, YouTube's first live 360-degree performance, and a VR music video covered by WIRED, VRScout, and VR Days Europe.

Twenty-five years of pointing a camera at other people taught him something simple. You cannot tell someone else's story until you understand your own.