Palu, Louie, 1968- : Louie Palu is an award winning photojournalist and documentary photographer who is best known for his long-term studies of contemporary social and political issues. He is a first-generation Italian-Canadian (born 29 September 1968 in Toronto, Ontario to Giuseppe and Fiorina Palu), attended Chaminade College School and C.W. Jeffreys Secondary School Art Centre in Toronto, and earned his A.O.C.A. from the Ontario College of Art (OCAD) in 1991. After graduating he attended Nova Scotia College of Art on a New York City Scholarship. Palu's work resembles those he most admires the work of Walker Evans and of the photographers with the Farms Security Administration in the 1930s including Dorethea Lange. He has also been influenced by the traditions of British photojournalist Don McCullin.
Palu was always interested in making a career as a photojournalist and has done freelance work for numerous national and international magazines and newspapers including Asia Times, Forbes Magazine, Reader's Digest, MacLean's Magazine, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, The Ottawa Citizen, The Edmonton Sun, The Financial Post Magazine, Report on Business, Canadian Business Magazine, Toronto Life Magazine, The National Post and This Magazine. Since 2001 he has been a staff photojournalist at The Globe and Mail. He has also worked as a Gallery Assistant, an intern with New York based photographer Mary Ellen Mark and as a research assistant on The Gum Bichromate Book: Non-Silver Methods for Photographic Printmaking (1991) by David Scopick.
In 2006, Palu first travelled to Afghanistan as an assignment photographer with the Globe and Mail. By 2007, Palu resigned from the newspaper and began to document the war in Afghanistan as an independent documentary photography. From 2006 to 2010, Palu spent an accumulated 18 months in the field and on the front lines as an unembedded and embedded journalist with Canadian, Afghan, and American soldiers. He wanted to "experience the war firsthand" and "document the conflict as it played out in the most problematic civilian areas" (Palu, Total war. VQR Online, 2010).
By 2011, the combat operations in Afghanistan were considered complete, and Canada began the multi-year process of withdrawing troops. At the same time Palu returned to North America, and before too long turned his lens to drugs and organized crime along the Mexico/U.S. border (Richler, Canadian Art, 2015). Since leaving Afghanistan, Palu has also produced the award winning documentary "Kandahar Journals", which was inspired from the years he spent in Afghanistan.
Publications and Exhibitions
Palu had his first solo exhibition in 1989 at the University of Toronto Macmillan Theatre. He has been apart of numerous group exhibitions from 1991-2001 at galleries across Ontario and Quebec including the Museum of Civilization in Hull, the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, the Centre For Photography At Woodstock, and as part of a travelling exhibition called Regard Du Quebec in 1997. Palu has made a serious point of ensuring his work circulate in the villages of its genesis and has had numerous shows in small mining towns including Timmins, Elliot Lake, Kirkland Lake, Cobalt, Bancroft and Sudbury. He has also exhibited in New York City at the Warde Nasse Gallery in 1991.
Palu's photographs have been published in newspapers of mining towns and featured nationally in two-page spreads in both the National Post and the Globe and Mail. He has also had features in The Beaver, Photo District News, Kodak Professional Imaging News, PhotoLife and The Montreal Gazette. Palu's exhibited Industrial Cathedrals of the North at D-Max Gallery in Toronto, the Museum of Northern History in Kirkland Lake and Contact 2001 Photo Festival in Toronto. His photographers were also featured alongside Ed Burtynsky in an exhibition curated by historian Rosemary Donegan called Topographies. An exhibition booklet was published and is included herein.
Palu worked with writer and historian Charlie Angus on Industrial Cathedrals of the North published in 1999 as well as his second book Mirrors of Stone published in 2001. Both books published French and English text alongside one another.
Palu's Afghanistan work, The Fighting Season, has featured in a number of solo exhibitions, including: Kinsman Robinson Galleries, Toronto, ON (2011); Honfleur Gallery, Washington, DC (2011); Sol Mednick Gallery, Washington, DC (2012); Canadian War Museum, Ottawa, ON (2012); Bluesky Gallery, Portland, OR (2012), as well as major group exhibitions in both Canada and the United States. He is also represented in the permanent collections of: Library and Archives Canada, Harry Ransom Center (University of Texas), Boston Museum of Fine Arts, National Gallery of Art (U.S.), Portland Art Museum, George Eastman House, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, National Gallery of Canada, Library of the U.S. Marine Corps Archives and Special Collections, Southeast Museum of Photography, Australian War Memorial, and the Canadian War Museum.
Awards
Throughout his career Palu has accumulated a number of prestigious awards, such as a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2016, a 2011-2012 Bernard L. Schwartz Fellow with the New America Foundation, and Canadian Photojournalist of the Year in 2008 (Richler, 2015). Those awards directly related to his photographic work in Afghanistan include: Ross Munro Media Award (2014); Leopold Godowsky Award (2013); Silver Award for "Borderline", Canadian Online Publishing Awards (2013); White House News Photographers Association, Pictures of the Year-Eyes of Time Contest, Three 1st places and one Award of Excellence (2013); Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting Grant (2012); Aperture Prize Finalist (2012); National Magazine Award for portraiture (2011); Alexia Foundation Documentary Photography Grant for World Peace and Cultural Understanding (2010); Hearst Photography Biennial (2009); Hasselblad Master Award (2008); and the Aftermath Grant (2009).
Palu is a member of the National Press Photographers Association and the Canadian Association of Journalists.
