Andrea Bruce is a documentary photographer whose work focuses on ideas of democracy and people living in the aftermath of war. She often concentrates on the social issues that are sometimes ignored and often ignited in war’s wake.
Her clients include National Geographic and The New York Times as well as many publications around the globe. Andrea was a 2016 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, where she studied political theory. She is the creator of Down in the County, a weekly newsletter serving Pamlico County, NC.
She started working in Iraq in 2003, bringing a local reporter’s knack for intimacy and community focus to the lives of Iraqis and the US military. For eight years she worked as a staff photographer for The Washington Post, where she originated and authored a weekly column called “Unseen Iraq.” She also worked at The Concord Monitor and The St. Petersburg Times after graduating from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1995. She is now a member/ owner of the photo agency NOOR.
In 2011, she was an Alicia Patterson Fellow, and in 2019 she was a CatchLight Fellow and a National Geographic Explorer. Her awards include the 2018 IWMF Anja Niedringhaus award, a 2014 World Press Photo 2nd prize for Daily Life, and the inaugural Chris Hondros Fund Award in 2012 for the “commitment, willingness and sacrifice shown in her work.” She has been named Photographer of the Year four times by the WHNPA, received several awards from the Pictures of the Year International contest, including the 2017 Environmental Vision Award, and was awarded the prestigious John Faber Award from the Overseas Press Club in New York.
Currently, she is based in North Carolina, is the author of the weekly newsletter, “Down in the County”, teaches for New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute is in the process of getting her MFA from the School of the Art Institute Chicago.
