Amy Toensing

Life and work

Toensing obtained a bachelor's degree in human ecology from the College of the Atlantic in Maine.

She began her professional career in 1994 as a staff photographer at her home town paper, The Valley News in New Hampshire. She then worked for The New York Times, Washington D.C. bureau covering the White House and Capitol Hill during the Presidency of Bill Clinton. In 1998, Toensing left D.C. to receive her master's degree from the School of Visual Communication at Ohio University.

Toensing has been a regular contributor to National Geographic magazine for over a decade, with 13 published feature stories. She has covered cultures around the world including the last cave dwelling tribe of Papua New Guinea, the Māori people of New Zealand and the Kingdom of Tonga. She has also covered issues such as the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina and Muslim women living in Western culture. Toensing spent more than four years documenting Indigenous Australians. This work was published in the June 2013 edition of National Geographic.

She is one of 11 women featured in National Geographic's ongoing traveling exhibition, Women of Vision. The exhibit showcases a diversity of photos from the magazine's most accomplished women photojournalists.

In addition to her photojournalism work, Toensing teaches photography to kids and young adults in undeserved communities. This includes working with nonprofit organization Vision Workshops on projects including teaching photography to Somali and Sudanese refugees in Maine and Burmese refugees in Baltimore. She traveled to Islamabad to teach young Pakistanis photojournalism and cover their own communities.

Her work has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Time, and National Geographic Traveler.

Toensing lives in the Hudson Valley of New York with her husband Matt Moyer, who is also a photojournalist.

Award

Exhibitions