Rita Harper is a visual journalist from Atlanta, Georgia. Her work highlights and celebrates the narratives of the everyday individual making their way through life. Through her photographs, she visually illustrates stories of black history, love, resilience, and entrepreneurship.
She desires to show the beauty of the everyday person, and that we all hold value regardless of social status, occupation, and other shallow markers of importance within society. She has captured images of unsung pillars of tight-knit communities, to environmental activists fighting against powerful, faceless corporations.
Rita has received several grants and awards, including the Hambidge Distinguished Fellowship and Residency (2023), the Sprite X Wish ATL: The Give Back Artist Grant (2020), Southern Documentary Grant Award (2020), and the National Geographic Emergency Fund for Journalists Grant (2020), and the National Black Arts Foundation Grant (2022).
Her work has been featured in exhibitions nationally and internationally with a most recent group exhibiton in Paris, France. She has been commissioned by Vanity Fair, Vogue, The New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, Rolling Stone, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, National Geographic, ProPublica, The Guardian, and many more to document stories of social injustice, political unrest, climate change, and preserved history in her own unique way.
