Carol Dragon is a New York City based photographer who focuses on portraiture, dance and still life projects.

Her 2026 exhibition was Memento Vivere, a show focusing on still lifes. Each piece began with flowers at the peak of their beauty. Some were captured at their moment of fullness. Others were woven — literally, physically woven — with images of those same flowers after they had died. Strip by strip, the living and the dead were interlaced into a single surface.

Carol spent 10 years working with the Brooklyn street dance community, with a focus on a dance style called Flexn. Little did she know when she walked into the Park Avenue Armory on a cold rainy night in 2015 that she was about to find a passion that would stay with her for years to come. The performance was Flexn and down the rabbit hole she tumbled. Carol immersed herself in documenting the world of Flexn, the dancers and their community. In the spring of 2024 she collaborated with director and choreographer, Regg Roc Gray, and music producer, Epic B, to create Riddims’ of the Gods, a multi-media dance, video and music performance, at National Sawdust in Williamsburg.

She had a solo exhibition, MADD PAIN, at Park Avenue Armory, in conjunction with performances of Flexn Evolution (www.maddpain.com), and she staged an event, Beyond the Yellow Tape, which paired her portraits and videos of dancers with live performances. For these expansive projects, she was awarded 2017 and 2018 Creative Engagement grants by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and a 2018 Citizens Committee of New York City Neighborhood Grant.

Her work has been exhibited in multiple solo shows in New York City. In spring of 2019 her commissioned portraits for Families Belong Together were shown at SXSW in Austin, Texas. This exhibition was part of the ACLU 100 Years Experience and traveled to 15 other U.S. states.

Carol holds a BFA and MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, where she began her career as a painter. Since 1990, Dragon has worked solely with photography. Her images have been featured in L.A. Dance Chronicle, Bleucalf, The Photo Review, Shots Magazine, Pinhole Journal Vol.20, Zero Image Gallery, The Culture Trip, and Synergy Magazine. Dragon’s work was showcased in the Cynthia Dantzig book, 100 New York Photographers.

In addition to working actively as a photographer, Dragon teaches at the International Center of Photography in New York and has taught a number of workshops in Italy, Dubai, Maine and Austin, Texas. PDN magazine ranked her as one of the top photography instructors in the article: The Best Photo Workshops: A Reader Survey. She has also been a guest lecturer at Princeton University.

Privately commissioned pieces and personal portrait shoots can be arranged. For more information, please contact Carol at caroldragon.photo@gmail.com or message her on Instagram @caroldragonphoto