Alan Chin is an American photographer, professor, and writer who has worked as a freelance photojournalist in various global hotspots since 1996, including China, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Central Asia, Egypt, and Tunisia. In the U.S., he has documented the Civil Rights Movement trail, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and the 2008 presidential election. His career began with photographing the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989. Chin contributes to Newsweek and The New York Times, works as an editor and photographer at BagNews, and serves as the Managing Director of Facing Change: Documenting America (FCDA).
He also teaches photojournalism at Columbia University. He is currently working on a book about Taishan, his ancestral region, and is a founding partner of Red Hook Editions.
Chin’s work in Kosovo earned him Pulitzer Prize nominations in 1999 and 2000, and he won the 2017 Knight Foundation Detroit Arts Challenge. His photography is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Detroit Institute of Arts. He was born and raised in New York City’s Chinatown.