Alyssa Schukar Bio

Alyssa Schukar [she/her] is a Washington, D.C.-based visual journalist, writer, and educator. During nearly a decade of assignment work, she has met deadlines on helicopters and in blizzards, in the middle of Black Lives Matter marches, and from the belly of the U.S. Capitol. She’s documented communities surrounded by heavy industry in Indiana, hurricane devastation worsened by climate change in Texas, the Standing Rock challenge to the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the human cost of the opioid crisis in Ohio. 

The people she has met through her work influence her understanding of the world, and they motivate her to study and name the larger forces that affect communities’ everyday lives.

Her work has been published broadly -- including in the New York Times, the New Yorker, and the National Geographic magazine -- and has been honored by Pictures of the Year International, the NPPA's Best of Photojournalism, and World Press Photo, among others.

She is a co-founder of Chicago’s Prism Photo Workshop, which offers support and resources to early-career photographers, and she has served as a co-director and faculty member of the 75-year-old Missouri Photo Workshop.

Alyssa is a native of the Great Plains, an avid reader, and a fan of big open spaces.