Melissa Farlow

Country: United States 🇺🇸

Melissa Farlow is a freelance photographer whose assignments vary from people and cultural to landscape and environmental stories. She photographed 15 projects for National Geographic on topics including the Alps, Kentucky thoroughbred horses and America’s National Parks. Working extensively in the American West, Farlow drove 20,000 miles working on stories about public lands and wild horses. She photographed two books for National Geographic, Wild Lands of the West and The Long Road South featuring the Pan American highway. In addition, WILD AT HEART, a book about the plight of wild mustangs premieres in late 2015 and is honored as a Junior Library Guild selection.

Farlow began her career at newspapers and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for photographs of racial desegregation of public schools as a member of the staff of the Courier-Journal and Louisville Times. She won a National Headliner Award and while a staff photographer for the Pittsburgh Press newspaper, her portfolio and long-term projects were honored in POYi. Farlow was named Distinguished Alumni by the Indiana University School of Journalism and she was inducted into the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame in 2013.

Farlow’s images appear in magazines including Smithsonian, GEO, Sierra, Stern, LIFE and National Geographic Traveler. Her photographs are published in over 70 books including Day in the Life series as well as in The Photographs, Women Photographers at National Geographic, Best 100 Wildlife Photographs at National Geographic and Descubria, Ecuador. She documented women's roles in three African nations for the book Women in the Material World. Her photographs were made in over 25 countries and throughout the U.S. and are published in nearly 70 books on various topics.

Working for non-profits over the years, she did projects for the Heinz Endowments, the Ford Foundation, Habitat for Humanity and National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. She has served on the faculty of the Missouri Photo Workshop more than 25 times. Farlow and her photographer husband Randy Olson lecture, consult and mentor photographers with theimagereview through thephotosociety.org.