Randy Olson
Social-documentary photographer (USA)
Randy Olson is a social-documentary photographer whose assignments have taken him to more than 50 countries. Published in LIFE, GEO, Smithsonian, and other magazines, he has devoted most of his career to long-term National Geographic magazine projects focused on resource extraction and its impact on indigenous communities and fragile ecosystems. While working as a newspaper photographer, Olson received an Alfred Eisenstadt Award for Magazine Photography, an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship for a seven-year project documenting a family with AIDS, and a Robert F. Kennedy Award for a Section 8 housing story. He also earned a Nikon Sabbatical Grant and a National Archives grant to preserve the Pictures of the Year collection. A two-time Pictures of the Year International Photographer of the Year—one of only two ever to win in both magazine and newspaper categories—Olson has also received the 2017 Siena International Photo Awards Photographer of the Year and the 2021 HIPA International Photography Appreciation Award.