Aaron Huey

In 2015 Huey published Where the Heaven Flowers Grow, a collection of his photography documenting the visionary environment of Salvation Mountain by outsider artist Leonard Knight. Huey is also interviewed in the 2015 documentary film Leonard Knight: A Man & His Mountain.

Huey was a 2012 Stanford Knight Fellow where he worked on new media models for community storytelling. He is a contributing editor for Harper’s Magazine, only the second photographer to occupy the masthead in the magazine’s 162-year history. His photography appears regularly in National Geographic, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Smithsonian, among others.

Huey’s extensive work documenting the poverty and issues of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation gained wider recognition in 2010 with his talk at TEDxDU at the University of Denver, America’s Native Prisoners of War. The talk was selected to run on TED.com which gave it global exposure. The talk outlines the precarious and often violent relationship between the United States government and the people of the Sioux Nation, the history of their treaties, and the effect it has had on the descendants of both parties. A book of Huey’s images from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Mitakuye Oyasin (meaning “all my relations”), will be released by Radius Books in Spring 2013.

In 2010 Huey founded a street art project collaborating with artists Shepard Fairey and Ernesto Yerena, that he eventually grew into a non-profit called Amplifier. Huey was the architect of and design director for the art project called “We The People” that flooded the streets of the Inauguration of Donald Trump and the Women’s March in January 2017. The project was funded through a Kickstarter that raised 1.36 million dollars in 8 days. The campaign broke a crowdfunding record to become the “most backed” art Kickstarter in history, with 22,840 backers.

Huey was named one of PDN’s 30 new and emerging photographers in the world for 2007, and was shortlisted for the Alexia Prize the following year. Also in 2008, Huey was awarded a National Geographic Expedition Council Grant to hitchhike across Siberia.

In 2002 Huey and his dog, Cosmo, embarked on a walk across America. The journey lasted 154 days and covered 3,349 miles. There was no media coverage. They walked every step. Carrying only one camera and lens Huey documented the places and people they met along the way. He spoke about his motivation for the walk and his experiences during an Annenberg Foundation lecture, American Ocean, given in 2010.

Aaron Huey (born December 9, 1975) is an American photojournalist and documentary photographer who is most widely known for his walk across America in 2002, his work as a National Geographic photographer, and for the art and advocacy non-profit called Amplifier. He grew up in Worland, Wyoming, graduating from Worland High School. He received his BFA from the University of Denver, in Colorado in 1999.