Ryan Libre, a documentary photographer, is a Nikon Inspiration Award Winner, Chapnick grantee from the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund, 2 time TEDx speaker, Pulitzer Center grantee, and the founder of Documentary Arts Asia (DAA), a non-profit organization working to tell stories from Asia that need to be heard. The organization was conceived in 2008 after Ryan’s work on NGO documentary projects brought Asia’s need for visual literacy education to his attention.
In 2011, he was awarded the Howard Chapnick Grant, part of the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund, to build a physical space for the organization. Three years later, DAA flourishes in its mission. The DAA center supports documentary artists in Asia with various amenities including a gallery, a library, and a workshop space.
“I instantly fell in love with this form of communication called documentary photography, that allowed me to be active, artistic and independent.”
Ryan spends a lot of time getting to know his subjects and very little time post-processing. Ryan has held solo exhibitions at the Nikon Salons in Tokyo and Osaka, the Fuji Film Salon, The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand, The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, and more. Ryan’s first feature length documentary, When Will It Be, is in editing . When not working on projects or teaching photography workshops, he enjoys working on his organic adobe solar homestead in northern Thailand.
Ryan and his team at Documentary Arts are in the process of building a brand new complex to house their growing village of like-minded artists and photographers. You may find out more about Ryan and Documentary Arts Asia (DAA) at this link.
Ryan works primarily on self-assigned projects but may be available for assignments in Asia.
