Raymond Thompson Jr. is an artist, author and visual journalist based in Austin, Texas. His work looks at how race, memory and history shape the American landscape. He is an Assistant Professor of Photojournalism at the University of Texas at Austin. He has an MFA in Photography from West Virginia University.
His books include Appalachian Ghost (University Press of Kentucky, 2024) and It's hard to stop rebels that time travel (Void, 2025). The first is a photographic reimagining of the Hawk's Nest Tunnel disaster in West Virginia. The second mixes his photographs with archival fragments and historic ephemera. It tells the stories of maroons, enslaved people who escaped and built independent communities. The project is centered on New Bern, North Carolina.
As a freelance photographer, he has worked for The New York Times, ProPublica and NPR.
