Lou Dematteis

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Lou Dematteis is an American photographer and filmmaker who documents social, environmental, and political conflicts and their effects in the United States and worldwide. He was born in Palo Alto, California, grew up on the San Francisco Peninsula, and studied political science at the University of San Francisco and photography at the De Young Museum Art School in San Francisco. Over about 30 years, he has worked in Mexico, the Caribbean, Central and South America, Europe, and Asia. He was a staff photographer for Reuters and lived in Managua, Nicaragua during the height of the Contra war. His photo book Nicaragua: A Decade of Revolution was published by Norton in 1991.

In 1993 he went to the Ecuadorian Amazon to document the harm from Texaco’s oil operations and environmental pollution, and he has returned to continue this work, focusing on the health impacts on local communities. His Ecuador photos appear in the Crude Reflections: ChevronTexaco's Rainforest Legacy exhibit and online at Chevron Toxico. His work has been shown widely, including at the Ansel Adams Center in San Francisco and the Photographers’ Gallery in London. He helped stage the first U.S. exhibit by Vietnamese photographers since the Vietnam War in 1992 and the first U.S. exhibit by Vietnamese photographers in 1994. He received a 2007 Open Society Institute grant to exhibit his Ecuadorian Amazon work in affected communities, and his bilingual book Crude Reflections/Cruda Realidad was published in 2008 by City Lights Books. He lives in San Francisco and also makes films.

His documentary Crimebuster: A Son's Search for His Father, which he produced and directed, aired on Public Television nationwide starting in 2012. His latest film, The Other Barrio, premiered as the Centerpiece Film at the San Francisco Indie Fest in February 2015. Produced by Dematteis and Dante Betteo and directed by Betteo, it is based on a story by San Francisco Poet Laureate Alejandro Murguia and is set in San Francisco’s Latino Mission District, addressing fires, gentrification, and the displacement of low-income communities.