Raymond Thompson Jr

Raymond Thompson Jr. is an interdisciplinary artist, visual journalist, and educator based in Austin, Texas. He holds an MFA in Photography from West Virginia University, an MA in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin, and a BA in American Studies from the University of Mary Washington. Currently, he serves as Assistant Professor of Photojournalism at UT Austin.

Thompson’s work explores the intersections of race, memory, representation, and place, especially in shaping the Black environmental imagination of North American landscapes. His major projects include the photobooks It’s Hard to Stop Rebels That Time Travel and Appalachian Ghost (University Press of Kentucky, 2024).

He has been honored with several awards, including the 2023 1619 Aftermath Grant and the 2021 Lenscratch Student Prize. His work has been exhibited at Fotofest Biennial and is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Virginia Museum of Fine Art, and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art.

As a freelancer, Thompson has produced visuals and multimedia stories for top-tier outlets, such as The New York Times, The Intercept, ProPublica, NPR, Bloomberg Businessweek, NBC News, Politico, the ACLU, Google, and the Associated Press. (Website, Instagram)