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Maggie Steber

2019 Honoree / Achievement In Photojournalism

A Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, Maggie Steber is an internationally known documentary photographer whose work has appeared internationally in major magazines, newspapers and book anthologies as well as national and international exhibitions. She has worked in 69 countries specializing in stories of underrepresented people that address a larger humanistic spectrum. Steber is best known for her multiple photo essays in National Geographic Magazine on diverse topics from the history of the African Slave Trade to Native Americans to science stories on Face Transplants, Sleep and Memory. She was named a National Geographic Woman of Vision in 2015. Steber has worked in Haiti over 30 years, photographing the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship beginning in 1986 and the political violence that followed as Haitians made their bid for democracy. One of her photographs was awarded Best Spot News Photo by the World Press Photo and a Leica Medal of Excellence. Steber continues to photograph daily life in Haiti and is on the advisory board for FotoKonbit.Org, a Haitian non-profit that teaches photography to young adults. Their work was featured in National Geographic Magazine in a story entitled Haiti On It’s Own Terms. A book on Steber’s humanistic documentation of Haiti, Dancing on Fire: Photographs from Haiti was published by Aperture. Steber’s photographs are included in the Library of Congress, Richter Collection, Guggenheim Foundation and numerous private collections. Throughout her career she has had 55 solo exhibitions and has been included in 50 group shows

Steber got her start at a small paper in Galveston, Texas as a reporter/photographer after convincing the managing editor to hire her by doing a photo story in one day for the paper without pay. Steber did it and got the job and the story was published on the front page. This has pretty defined her “never-say-die” attitude. From there she went to New York City where she worked as a photo editor at Associated Press Photos. She edited 3 Olympic Games and a national political convention for AP. Steber has worked as a contract photographer for Newsweek Magazine, and as the Director of Photography at The Miami Herald from 1999 to 2003. The Herald staff won a Pulitzer and were twice Pulitzer finalists. Steber covered the last two years (1978-1980) of the guerrilla war in Rhodesia, now called by it’s original name Zimbabwe. She worked for the New York Times and Sipa Press in Paris.

In 2013, MediaStorm produced Rite of Passage, a chronicle of her mother’s struggle with memory loss over a nine-year period. As an only child, Steber spent countless hours with her mother, using photography as her shield against the melancholy of watching someone go. The project which has been seen worldwide, received a Webby honor. The photographs have been widely published and exhibited in New York, Sweden, Bursa, Turkey, Arkansas, and other locations.

In 2017 the Guggenheim Foundation awarded Steber a grant for her project The Secret Garden of Lily LaPalma which she explains:.

“The Secret Garden photographs address the accumulation of experiences that that hang on a wallpaper in a house where our subconscious resides. I explore with my alter ego, Lily, through her imagination. Each photograph tells a story. A spinoff of the Secret Garden is the Dead Lizards Army which protects the Garden but have their own lives as well.” The project is ongoing. The photographs have been exhibited at National Geographic Seminars and inLos Angeles, Boston, San Francisco, New York, Sarajevo, Norway and Sweden twice. A book and short film are in progress.

Steber’s Honors and awards:

—2019 Pulitzer Prize Finalist for The Story of a Face, National Geographic Magazine

—2019 The Photographer’s Photographer Award from National Geographic Magazine

—2019 The President’s Award from the Overseas Press Club

—2017-2018 Guggenheim Foundation Fellow

—2015 National Geographic Magazine Woman of Vision

—2007 Knight Foundation grant for New American Newspaper Project

—2003 Medal of Honor for Contribution to Journalism, University of Missouri

—2001 Pulitzer Prize for Miami Herald coverage of Elian Gonzalez story

—1987 First Prize Spot News World Press Photo Foundation for Haiti

—1988 The Leica Medal of Excellence. Norwegian

—1988 Olivier Rebbot Award from the Overseas Press Club