Peter van Agtmael

Peter van Agtmael (born 1981) is a documentary photographer based in New York. Since 2006 he has concentrated on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and their consequences in the United States. He is a member of Magnum Photos.

Van Agtmael's photo essays have been published in The New York Times Magazine, Time, The New Yorker and The Guardian. He has published three books. His first, 2nd Tour Hope I Don't Die, was published by Photolucida as a prize for winning their Critical Mass Book Award. He received a W. Eugene Smith Grant from the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund to complete his second book, Disco Night Sept. 11. His third, Buzzing at the Sill, was published by Kehrer Verlag in 2016. He has twice received awards from World Press Photo, the Infinity Award for Young Photographer from the International Center of Photography and a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting,

Life and work Van Agtmael was born in Washington D.C. and grew up in Bethesda, Maryland. He studied history at Yale,

After graduation he received a fellowship to live in China for a year and document the consequences of the Three Gorges Dam. He has covered HIV-positive refugees in South Africa; the filming of the first season of TV series Treme on location in New Orleans in 2010; this "is a young photojournalist’s firsthand experience: the wars’ effects on him, on the soldiers and on the countries involved."

Publications

Publications by van Agtmael 2nd Tour Hope I Don't Die. Portland, OR: Photolucida, 2009. . Disco Night Sept. 11. Brooklyn: Red Hook, 2014. . Buzzing at the Sill. Heidelberg, Germany: Kehrer Verlag, 2016. . Sorry for the War. Mass, 2021. Look at the U.S.A.. Thames & Hudson, 2024. .

Publications with contributions by van Agtmael 25 Under 25: Up-and-Coming American Photographers, Volume 2. New York: powerHouse, 2008. . Edited by Iris Tillman Hill, preface by Lauren Greenfield, introduction by Tom Rankin. A Year in Photography: Magnum Archive. Munich: Prestel; New York, Paris, London, Tokyo: Magnum, 2010. . The Contact Sheet. Pasadena, CA: Ammo, 2012. . Edited by Steve Crist. Photographs Not Taken. New York: Daylight, 2012. . Edited by Will Steacy. Photojournalists on War: The Untold Stories from Iraq. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013. . Edited by Michael Kamber, foreword by Dexter Filkins. Photographers' Sketchbooks. London: Thames & Hudson, 2014. . Edited by Stephen McLaren and Bryan Formhals.

Awards 2006: 25 Under 25: Up and Coming American Photographers, The Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, Duke University, Durham, NC. 2007: Second prize, General News stories category, World Press Photo Awards, World Press Photo, Amsterdam,

Exhibitions with others 2009: Battlespace, Prix Bayeux-Calvados, Bayeux, France, 5 October – 1 November 2009. Named after the military term Battlespace. 2010: Bringing the War Home, Impressions Gallery, Bradford, England, 17 September – 14 November 2010. Curated by Pippa Oldfield. Also included photographs by Sama Alshaibi, Farhad Ahrarnia, Lisa Barnard, Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, Edmund Clark, Kay May, Asef Ali Mohammad and Christopher Sims.