Roopa Gogineni is a photographer and filmmaker from West Virginia, based in Atlanta and Paris.
Over the past ten years her work has focused on historical memory and life amidst conflict in East Africa. She holds an MSc in African Studies from the University of Oxford, where she researched the construction of media narratives around Somalia. Her most recent short film I am Bisha was featured on The New York Times Op-Docs and earned the Oscar-qualifying Full Frame Jury Award for Best Short. She once directed reality television in Mogadishu, an experience chronicled in NPR's Invisibilia podcast.
Roopa currently advises a cohort of doctoral students using visual methodology in their study of pastoralism and uncertainty at The Institute of Development Studies.
Roopa is a proud member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia, Diversify Photo, Women Photograph, and The Authority Collective. She speaks French, Spanish, and Telugu and gets by in Swahili and Arabic. She has completed first aid and hostile environment training.
Awards, fellowships, exhibitions:
2020 Women Photograph Grant Recipient
2018 FRONTLINE/Firelight Investigative Journalism Fellowship
2018 Rory Peck Award for News Features
2018 One World Media Short Film Award
2018 Full Frame Jury Award for Best Short
2017 Firelight Media Short Film Grant
2016 "Over There” Exhibition, Annex Gallery
2016 Exhibition at Women Deliver, Copenhagen
2015 One World Media Awards Short Film Nominee
2014 RISC Benefit Show, Aperture Gallery
2012 Photo Lucida Critical Mass Finalist
2012 Ian Parry Scholarship Group Show
2012 Lucie Foundation Photo Mentorship Program
2012 "The Day I was Destroyed" Exhibition, Annex Gallery
2011 "Coal Colony" Exhibition, St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford
Selected clients:
The New York Times | The Washington Post | The Guardian | Stern | Capital | Al Jazeera | BBC | TOPIC | Bloomberg | Businessweek | The Sunday Times | The Telegraph | CNN | VICE | Lucky Peach | Eater | NPR | VOA | RFI
instagram a Q&A and a conversation