Julie Platner is a photojournalist, writer and filmmaker currently living in Los Angeles, CA. She is particularly fascinated with American society’s reverence for “rugged” bootstrap individualism and its intersection with patriarchal white supremacy. Platner is interested in subverting deeply embedded narratives to catalyze societal change. She believes that investigation and integration of personal and collective shadow is the journey and the destination.

Notably, Platner’s work is in permanent collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Her video and still photography chronicling white supremacists was the basis of a 2011 season-opening ‘60 Minutes’ segment as well as a front-page New York Times article. In January 2010, Platner was the first person to arrive in-country for the Wall Street Journal after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake shook Haiti, resulting in the deaths of over 220,000 people. She covered the 2008 Israel/Gaza War, “Operation Cast Lead,” and has documented American one-percenter biker gangs extensively for The New York Times. In 2019, Platner completed additional cinematography on Netflix’s Immigration Nation.

Platner has been a visiting artist at UNC’s Hussman School of Journalism and a guest lecturer at Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies. A member of the International Cinematographers’ Guild (Local 600), she has worked extensively in Television and Film production as an art department video/stills photographer as well as a producer. Platner holds a BA in Communication Studies from Northeastern University and an MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts from Duke University where she was awarded the David and Elizabeth Roderick Scholarship. 

Currently, Platner is writing a memoir about her time documenting American neo-Nazis. 

Awards / National Public Radio Fellowship, Photo District News, Communication Arts, POYI, among others.

Publications / The New York Times, D La Rebubblica, M le Magazine du Monde, Netflix, GQ, Stern, Time, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, CBS '60 Minutes', Al Jazeera Magazine, Photo District News,  Chronogram, Neue Energi, CNN Headline News, ABC World News, Interviú, Deutsche Post

Lectures & Panel Discussions / Rand Corporation, The Foreign Policy Association, the National Press Photographers Association, and NYU for the International Center of Photography and the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, a symposium on Committed Photojournalism.