BIO
Based in Southern Arizona, Kalin Steen is a cinematographer and director whose visual work has reached over 9 million people. He served as DP on a five-month documentary in Guatemala, contributed cinematography to a branded doc project for Patagonia, and is set to shoot an upcoming series with the Smithsonian. He is currently DP on two feature-length international documentaries in production. Though best known for documentary work, Kalin brings a strong narrative foundation from his time in the grip and electric department, including gaffing over a dozen narrative films. His approach to storytelling is careful and precise, guided by emotion and a quiet reverence for the people and places he films.
Related to his film work, he also is a director at The Canelo Project, a nonprofit focused on education, sustainability, and art. He also co-leads Little Ireland Pictures, a production company focused on non-linear storytelling.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I see my life-work as a way of offering perspective, not to convince, but to reveal beauty in something others haven’t seen beauty in before, perhaps even in what they oppose. In doing so, I aim to create understanding between people; nuance. Beauty isn’t always pretty, but it is always touching.
Visually, I’m drawn to a kind of calligraphic clarity: compositions that feel expressive, flowing, and instantly legible to the eye. Like handwriting, it’s about striking the right line—finding the most potent shape to hold what you want to say, and being expressive enough to feel it.
Raised near the U.S.–Mexico border, far from any city. I had no schooling in any form throughout my upbringing. With no curriculum to follow, I learned to trust contradictions, to find wonder where things don’t cleanly resolve. I choose stories that live in that in-between space: familiar but strange, quiet but charged.
