Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Lucian Perkins is an independent photographer and filmmaker based in Washington, D.C.
Lucian’s focus on documenting human-interest stories encompasses daily life and social issues in the United States to conflicts and crises overseas. He is known for an approach that counterpoints a deep sympathy for his subjects with an ability to expose their hopes and foibles, and for a style that combines formal clarity with, from time to time, an offbeat humor. At the University of Texas at Austin, he received a BA in Biology, worked on the student paper, The Daily Texan, and studied with acclaimed photographer Garry Winogrand, a continuing inspiration.
His first full-length documentary, The Messengers, follows two young volunteers who are transformed by the residents of a hospice for homeless HIV/AIDs patients. It premiered at FilmFestDC in April 2017. He has also filmed and produced short films on the Syrian refugee crisis, South Sudan, and the obesity and health crisis in America.
As a staff photographer at The Washington Post for more than 20 years, Lucian covered major international events such as the fall of the Soviet Union and its aftermath; the wars and refugee crisis in the former Yugoslavia, Chechnya, Iraq, and Afghanistan; and major events at home. Lucian received his first Pulitzer Prize for collaboration with Post reporter Leon Dash on their four-year study of the effects of poverty on three generations of a Washington, D.C., family through the eyes of the matriarch. His second was for coverage of the Kosovo conflict.
Additional awards include “Newspaper Photographer of the Year” by the National Press Photographers Association and “World Press Photo of the Year.” Lucian also worked closely with the online edition to produce many of the Post’s first multimedia and interactive projects, such as the “Siberia and Finland Diaries.” Colleagues in Russia were the inspiration to co-found InterFoto, an annual non-profit international photography conference held in Moscow that provided a competition as well as exchange programs and workshops. In 2009 he co-founded Facing Change: Documenting America, which is now running a very successful program in Detroit.
Lucian’s most recent book, Hard Art, DC, captures the beginning of the Washington, D.C., punk music scene in 1979 while revealing its reverberating impact today. And in award-winning Runway Madness, he delivers a ringside tongue-in-cheek look at the New York fashion shows.
Solo and group exhibitions have been shown at World Press, Amsterdam; ART in Embassies Program in Sarajevo, Havana, Tokyo, and Ankara; Newseum in Washington, D.C., San Francisco and New York; and Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University, Durham, among other venues.
Lucian pursues his love for the still image while on the go filming documentary projects for which he is in international demand.