Louie Palu

Louie Palu

Fellow: Awarded 2016
Field of Study: Photography

Competition: US & Canada

Louie Palu is an award winning documentary photographer and filmmaker whose work has appeared in publications, festivals and exhibitions internationally. He is the recipient of numerous awards including a Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting Grant and a 2011-12 Bernard L Schwartz Fellowship from the New America Foundation to document the effects of organized crime and drugs in Mexico. He is well known for long term projects which examine social political issues such as human rights, conflict and poverty. His 12-year study of hard mining communities in Canada’s North was selected for the Critical Mass Book award (2006) resulting in the book Cage Call: Life and Death in the Hard Rock Mining Belt.

Louie covered the war in Kandahar Afghanistan from 2006-2010 resulting in numerous short films including the feature documentary film Kandahar Journals released in 2015 in association with the documentary Channel. He is currently completing a documentary film on the war in Ukraine.

He is the recipient of numerous accolades including a National Magazine Award, White House News Photographers Association Eyes of History Award, Aftermath Project Grant and Alexia Foundation Photography Grant for World Peace and Cultural Understanding. In 2015 he was awarded a Milton Rogovin Fellowship from the Center of Creative Photography from the University of Arizona.

Louie’s work has been featured on the BBC, Al Jazeera, PBS NewsHour, The New York Times, Foreign Policy Magazine, TIME Magazine, Newsweek, The Atlantic, NPR, CBC, The Globe and Mail and Sunday Times Magazine.

His work has been exhibited at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery and Ryerson Image Centre. His work is held in numerous collections including the Harry Ransom Center, National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., Library and Archives of Canada, Portland Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, National Gallery of Canada, Library of the U.S. Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections Branch, Australian War Memorial and Museum of Fine Arts Boston.

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