Tomas van Houtryve

Photographer
Tomas van Houtryve

In 2006 Tomas Van Houtryve was named one of PDN’s 30 Emerging Photographers. He was awarded an Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship in 2008, and in 2010 he was named the POYi Photographer of the Year.

Tomas’ first monograph book, Behind the Curtains of 21st Century Communism, was published in Spring 2012. The seven-year-long project documents life in the last countries where the Communist Party remains in power: North Korea, Cuba, China, Nepal, Vietnam, and Laos. The series won the 2012 POYi World Understanding Award.

In 2013 Tomas began working on Blue Sky Days, a drone’s-eye view of America. Images from the project were first published in Harper’s as the largest photo portfolio in the magazine’s 164-year history. The series was awarded the 2015 ICP Infinity Award and honors from POYi, World Press Photo, and the White House News Photographer’s Association.

Tomas has had solo exhibitions of his work in Paris, New York City, Spain and Italy. Many of his photographs of intense political actions are distinguished by their intimacy.

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Featured Photographs

  • A hotel staff member polishes benches under a picture of Chairman Mao Zedong on November 3, 2009 in Nanjie village, Henan province, China. Nanjie is a model collective village run along Maoist lines. Residents live in identical apartments and receive free health care and education, but earn only a token salary, paid in coupons rather than currency. The government-supported Red Tourism program glorifies the deeds of past communist leaders through monuments, battle reenactments and tours of model communist villages like Nanjie. Hardly a reference can be found to the millions killed during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
    Photo by: Tomas Van Houtryve
  • Photo by: Tomas Van Houtryve
  • A candidate takes the oral test to become a tour leader at the Yangjialing Assembly Hall in Yan’an, China, on November 8, 2009. In 1945, the Seventh National Congress of the Communist Party of China was held here, naming Mao Zedong the undisputed leader and enshrining Mao Zedong Thought into the Party Constitution.
    Red Tourism
    Photo by: Tomas Van Houtryve
  • A young Moldovan girl burns a portrait of Vladimir Lenin that rioters had taken from the parliament building in Chisinau, Moldova, on April 7, 2009. Thousands of demonstrators had ransacked the building to protest what they said was a fraudulent victory by the governing Communist Party in the general election on April 5.
    Moldova's Tainted Elections
    Photo by: Tomas Van Houtryve
  • Papers fall out of the windows of the parliament building as rioters ransack the inside in Chisinau, Moldova, on April 7, 2009. Demonstrators had stormed the building to protest the victory of the governing Communist Party in the general election two days earlier. Opposition leaders accused the Communists of rigging the elections and demanded a recount. More than 30 people were injured in the protests and three demonstrators died in police custody under mysterious circumstances. The poorest country in Europe, Moldova is the only former Soviet state to vote the Communist Party back in power through democratic elections.
    Moldova's Tainted Elections
    Photo by: Tomas Van Houtryve

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