Melissa Farlow Bio

Before becoming a contract photographer for National Geographic, Melissa Farlow photographed a total of 17 years for newspapers--The Pittsburgh Press and the Courier-Journal and Louisville Times. While in Louisville, she was a member of the photographic staff that won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of desegregation in the public schools. Twice a finalist for the W. Eugene Smith grant for humanistic photography, Farlow's work has won several awards including a portfolio honor in the National Press Photographers' Association Pictures of the Year competition.

Farlow received journalism degrees from Indiana University and the University of Missouri where she also taught photojournalism. She is a regular faculty member for the Missouri Photo Workshop, and has taught at the Center for Photographic Studies in Louisville and the Anderson Ranch of Fine Arts in Aspen.

Farlow's photographs appear in several Day in the Life book projects as well as a dozen other books devoted to photography including the American South and Ecuador. She photographed in three African countries for "Women in the Material World," a book comparing women's lives in different cultures.She recently completed photography in Peru, Chile and Mexico for a National Geographic book on the Pan American highway. Her magazine stories published in German GEO and in Geographic range topically from Amish community and the Luddite movement to alligators and the Okefenokee Swamp.