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Kirk Crippens is a San Francisco Bay Area photographer whose long-form projects trace the social and environmental forces shaping American places, from economic shock and civic memory to forest poaching and community resilience.

His photographs are held in the permanent collections of major institutions including the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and the Oakland Museum of California. Signature series such as Foreclosure, USA, Portraitlandia, and Live Burls, a collaboration with Gretchen LeMaistre made with an 8×10 view camera, demonstrate his deep engagement with his subjects.

Crippens' work has been featured prominently in exhibitions such as Crystal Bridges Museum’s State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now, which included a dedicated presentation of his Foreclosure, USA series in 2022-23. His portraiture was selected for the prestigious Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery in London, and he has mounted solo exhibitions at venues including Stanford University and SFO Museum.

A dedicated bookmaker, he has published three monographs with Schilt Publishing: Live Burls (2017), Going South - Big Sur (2019), and So Long (2021). His artist books are also held in the special collections of institutions like Yale's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Crippens is represented by Schilt Gallery in Amsterdam.