Danielle Villasana is a photojournalist based in her hometown of Houston, Texas, focusing on human rights, gender, displacement, and health throughout the Americas. She’s the 2022 Alexia Grant Professional Winner and is also a National Geographic Explorer, Magnum Foundation awardee, a Women Photograph grantee, an International Women’s Media Foundation fellow, and an alumna of the Eddie Adams Workshop.
Her work has been included in solo and group exhibits and has been featured in National Geographic, The New York Times, and the Washington Post, among other publications. Her first photo book, “A Light Inside,” which chronicles the issues transgender women face in Peru, was published in 2018 by FotoEvidence and used as an educational tool, distributed free-of-charge to universities and health care centers in Lima.
Villasana strongly believes in the power of photography paired with education and community development. In 2019 she co-founded We, Women, a platform exploring crucial issues across the U.S. through photo-based community engagement projects by women and gender nonconforming artists. In 2016, she joined The Everyday Project’s Community Team where she works on various initiatives and leads group photography projects. In 2018, she joined the Authority Collective as a board member. And, from 2014 to 2018, in partnership with the U.S. Embassy in Peru, she created and led Fotos por el Cambio, a photography workshop to empower communities and emerging photographers.
She’s also a member of Women Photograph, Diversify Photo, Ayün Fotógrafas, a collective of women photographers united by Latin America, and is a co-author of the Photo Bill of Rights.
