Faculty

Profile

Nicky Woo is a Black + indigenous Hawaiian visual storyteller, dividing her time between the African continent, Southeast Asia, and New York City.

Before shifting into her documentary work, Nicky was an art director for such brands as Ralph Lauren, Christian Dior, Ann Taylor and Target, hiring  photographer teams to keep images on brand for campaigns. After 10 years inthe field, she made a shift into the documentary world. Her current work focuses on human unrest and social justice with projects that center on the complicated realities that frame those events, particularly as precipitated by the legacy of western colonization. She is deeply interested in the aftermath of collective trauma and the myriad ways it shifts the underlying ethos of groups to form something new.

Nicky is a winner of American Photography 37, the Nikon-Stafford FotoReportage grant, Eddie Adams XXXIV, as well as a Reuters Storytelling grant for her work on a Tanzania-based project about the intersection of western medicine and witchcraft.

In her time as an independent her clients have included CNN, Bloomberg, The Washington Post, Human Rights Watch, Facebook, Der Spiegel, Apple, the Melinda Gates Foundation, Reporters Beyond Borders, The Guardian, Vogue Italia, and Marie Claire magazines.