Deborah Luster

Deborah Luster is best known for her long-term documentary series, One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana (1998–2003, with poet C. D. Wright), a photographic archive of portraits of prisoners from three Louisiana prisons, including the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola; and Tooth for an Eye: a Chorography of Violence in Orleans Parish (2008–2011), a photographic archive of cityscapes documenting locations in New Orleans where homicides have been committed. Twin Palms Publishing has issued monographs of both collections.

Luster’s awards include the Dorothea Lange–Paul Taylor Prize for Documentary Photography from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University (with C. D. Wright), an Anonymous Was a Woman Award, the John Guttman Award, the Bucksbaum Family Award for American Photography, and a Peter S. Reed Foundation Award.

Her work is included in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Smithsonian American Art Museum; New Orleans Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Pier 24, San Francisco; the Margulies Collection, Miami; and other notable public and private collections.

Deborah lives in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Galway, Ireland.

Her work is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery.

Profile photograph by the State of Louisiana.