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Astrid Riecken Adjunct Professorial Lecturer SOC Faculty

Bio
Astrid Riecken is a 2022 Pulitzer prize-winning photographer, based in Washington, DC. Since 2016, Riecken has taught at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design of George Washington University and since 2020 at the School of Communication at American University.

Riecken has won numerous awards in Picture of the Year International (Poyi), National Press Photographers Association's Best of Photography (BOP) and the White House News Photographers Association (WHNPA) competition in which she was named "Photographer of the Year" in 2014. In 2022, nominated by The Washington Post, she won as part of a team the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for the coverage of the assault on Washington on January 6, 2021.

Riecken was also a participant in the Eddie Adams Workshop, has won numerous awards in College Photographer of the Year, was twice a finalist for the William Randolph Hearst National College Journalism Competition and the recipient of the NPPA Joseph Ehrenreich scholarship and the Greg Robinson Memorial scholarship. In 2016, Riecken was named Outstanding Journalism Alumna by SFSU.

Among many other news events, Riecken covered the earthquake in Haiti, Hurricane Katrina, the presidential campaign and election of former President Barack Obama, the refugee crisis in Germany in 2015, the impeachment trials of former President Donald Trump, and the Black Lives Matter movement. Her personal work focuses on the lives and struggle of aging Jazz musicians in the US.

Equally comfortable in English and German, Riecken frequently freelances for international publications including Getty Images and The Washington Post. Her work has been published by The Washington Post, The New York Times, Newsweek, Time Magazine, The Guardian, and Die Zeit, among many others.
For the Media
To request an interview for a news story, call AU Communications at 202-885-5950 or submit a request.

Teaching

Spring 2024

  • COMM-250 Digital Imaging

Fall 2024

  • COMM-105 Visual Literacy

  • COMM-105 Visual Literacy