In 1980, just 23 years old and having won an unprecedented first place in every category of the prestigious College Photographer of the Year award, Louie Psihoyos became the first new National Geographic photographer hired on staff in more than a decade. Psihoyos worked for the yellow-bordered magazine for the next 17 years establishing himself as one of the medium's most prolific and profound visionaries and social observers. He has circled the globe dozens of times for National Geographic on photographic missions as diverse as Sleep and Dreams to the Sense of Smell. He is world-renown for his imagination wit and iconic imagery.
His first story for National Geographic was the Powder River Basin: The New Energy Frontier and marked the return of the classic black and white essay, the first published by National Geographic in some 20 years. He has won numerous awards including first place in the World Press Contest, the Hearst Awards and the National Press Photographers Association. While he shoots editorial for magazines around the world much of his work makes it onto the walls of some of the finest museums and galleries in the world including the Corchoran National Gallery in Washington D.C., The International Center of Photography in New York and the Musee de Elysee in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Psihoyos was born in Dubuque, Iowa in 1957, the son of a Greek immigrant who fled communist occupation of the Peloponnesos region near Sparta after World War II. With a childhood passion for art, Louie discovered photography at the age 14. He won several Kodak Photography Contests by the age of 15. He received a college scholarship from Joseph Ehrenreich the real-life "Goldfinger" on whom Ian Fleming based his James Bond character. Psihoyos worked briefly for several newspapers including the L.A. Times while attending the University of Missouri Journalism Department for photojournalism, one of the most prestigious journalism schools in the country.
At 17 he had a minor role as Sylvester Stallone's wedding photographer in a forgettable movie called F.I.S.T. that gave him an introduction to Hollywood. Since then Psihoyos has photographed hundreds of luminaries from all walks of life. He also photographed gratis many popular posters of Paul Newman for "Newman's Own" the company, which benefits a vast array of charities including "The Hole in the Wall Gang" a camp where children with cancer and serious blood diseases find camaraderie, joy and a renewed sense of being a kid.
Louie lived in New York for ten years in an artist's building that was home and studio to world-famous artists such as Sandro Chia, Julian Schnabel and Arman and the infamous Gagosian Gallery. Psihoyos maintained a floor of the building for several years while he created photographs and lived with his wife, who danced ballet with George Balanchine's New York City Ballet. After having two children, Nico and Sam, they moved their family to Antigua in the West Indies to raise their children while Louie wrote. The resulting book, called Hunting Dinosaurs, and published in 1994 by Random House, was about his travels around the world for a National Geographic story documenting dinosaur discoveries. Louie became the subject of national news, including a front page Wall Street Journal article when he discovered the bones of famed paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope on a museum shelf. Paleontologists, Charlie and Flo McGovern named one of their discoveries, "Baby Louie" after Psihoyos. The small embryonic carnivorous dinosaur, discovered in the Shiguo Formation in the Henan Province of China is one of the best-preserved dinosaur eggs in the world and is now a center piece for The Children's Museum of Indianapolis.
Psihoyos was a main contributor to the "Material World Project" a U.N. sponsored traveling show of family portraits depicting 40 families from different countries with their material possessions. The resulting book from that work was a best seller and has been reprinted dozens of times in many languages. Louie was the subject of several books about the work of National Geographic Photographers including National Geographic On Assignment USA, Odyssey - The Art of the National Geographic and National Geographic - The Photographs. He has also been the subject of a National Geographic Explorer Program,, segments of CBS Sunday Morning, and Good Morning America and has been invited to speak on NPR several times. He was also a one of the first speakers at National Geographics' popular, "Masters of Photojournalism" lecture series and has made dozens of speaking engagements as well as a keynote speaker for an Audobon Society fundraiser.
Since moving to Boulder in 1993 Psihoyos has established himself as one of the premier documentors of the digital age with his illuminating portraits of the "bit-barons" like Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Jim Clark. Psihoyos photographed and published a book on Hyperion, the world's first computer-controlled sailing yacht. The 155-foot vessel with nearly 200-foot tall carbon fiber mast was built by The Royal Huisman Shipping yard in Holland, considered to be the finest shipyard in the world for sailing superyachts.
