‘They are America’: Photographer spotlights civil servants who have lost their jobs under Trump 

Stacy Crevello worked at the U.S. Agency for International Development for more than 20 years before the Trump administration laid off nearly all of its workforce. 

Allan Dinkoff, a lawyer who is pursuing photography in his retirement, wanted to photograph Crevello for a project featuring civil servants who lost their jobs or were pushed out of government under Trump, as the president seeks to shrink the size of the civil service. 

During a call to arrange a time to meet, Dinkoff recalled, Crevello shared that it was a tough day for her because she had to punch holes in her diplomatic passport, invalidating it. 

“So I asked her that she bring the passport with her, which she did,” Dinkoff said. “Then, it was her idea to hold that passport in front of her face, which shows both the holes in the passport as well as stickers on the back which were from her last trip for USAID when she was heading to Cape Town, South Africa.” 

Crevello told Dinkoff that she received a stop work order while she was traveling to the country. 

Dinkoff said that he wanted his project to document harms that the Trump administration is causing to a group. He said he decided on federal employees largely because he felt their challenges weren’t receiving enough attention; although, the photographer found that many former civil servants would rather talk about how recent changes at many agencies are impacting services to the public. 

“They don't want the focus to be on themselves, but I think we owe it to them to tell their stories. We owe it to them both because of what they gave to this country, and I think we owe it to the country to tell their stories, because what is happening to [federal employees] is the story of what is happening to America in 2025. Because they are America,” he said, noting the race, religious and gender diversity of the civil servants he photographed. “We have ‘othered’ them, and by doing so, we have really ‘othered’ America. We have turned on ourselves. And in doing that, we have lost our purpose as an America — as a nation. I think that's a story that needs to be told.”

Dinkoff is pursuing his project, “Targeted: Portraits of Civil Servants Under Trump,” as part of a visual storytelling program through the International Center of Photography. Since April 2025, he has photographed 65 ex-feds from 19 agencies. 

He said that there’s more overlap between photography and his 42-year legal career, where he specialized in employment law and civil litigation, than one would expect.

“For a good part of my career, I was a trial lawyer or an advocate. As an advocate, I'm telling my client’s story,” he said. “And as a photographer, I'm telling the story, hopefully accurately and hopefully with passion, just like I did as a lawyer.” 

Another story that Dinkoff told for his civil servant project is of Jessica Henry, whose position was terminated at the National Institutes of Health. 

“She and her husband had been trying for a while to have a baby and had been going through IVF and had trouble with it. Then just with all the stress, it was unlikely that the next round was going to work and also the cost [required both of] their resources,” he said. “So they have given up on having a child through their own. And the photograph shows her and her husband in an embrace on the porch of their home.” 

Henry is now baking and selling cookies, according to Dinkoff’s website. 

Several of Dinkoff’s subjects asked to remain anonymous due to fears of retribution. He said that one of his favorite portraits is of one of these individuals. 

“The way I let people be anonymous was I would shoot them from the back or I would shoot their hands,” he said. “This shot from the back, I thought, really captured a lot of that need for anonymity and the dignity that these people are handling this with.” 

The caption for this photo is a quote that its subject told Dinkoff: "It's hard to have your country say your work didn't matter. Particularly as a woman of color, specifically a Black woman. It's really hard, because I've spent a lot of my life hearing how I didn't matter."

The Trump administration has argued that shedding agency workers is necessary to improve government efficiency. 

Dinkoff noted that he worked on several layoffs as a corporate lawyer in New York City. As such, he has observed that the recent federal reductions in force have affected people more personally than most private sector job losses. 

“There's something different here, which is that when they lost their jobs, they lost something that gave expression to the meaning and purpose of their life. It's not something that's replaceable in private industry, at least largely for almost all of them,” he said. “There's something really profound about the fact that they devoted their life to something, and they found a way to give expression to that, but now that means of expression has been destroyed.”