Dudley M. Brooks is the deputy director of Photography for The Washington Post, where he manages the creative strategy and production of photo content for the Features, Local, and Sports departments. Before its discontinuance in December of 2022, he was also the photo editor of The Washington Post Magazine.
Immediately prior, he was the director of Photography for the monthly magazine Ebony and senior photo editor for its weekly sister periodical Jet. These publications chronicled the African American experience for nearly eight decades and he was a member of the senior staff responsible for redefining their brand.
Born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, Brooks is a graduate of Morgan State University with a degree in Fine Arts. He began his journalism career in 1981 as a staff photographer for the Rockford Register Star newspaper in northern Illinois. He later joined the photography staff at The Washington Post from 1983 to 2005 and has received numerous awards for his work as a photographer there. The stories that he’s photographed range from those of local and national interest to major news events of international scale.
Brooks was the assistant managing editor of Photography at The Baltimore Sun newspaper from 2005 to 2007 and the co-creator/director of the landmark 1992 project Songs of My People: African Americans – A Self-Portrait, a best-selling photography book, and a globally toured exhibition. The undertaking commissioned new work by 53 African-American photographers and has been widely celebrated for its fresh perspective of contemporary Black culture.
In 2003 he created and co-directed Imagenes Havana, a comprehensive workshop in Havana, Cuba which included an exhibition that displayed the work of 25 international photographers, supplemented by roundtable forums.
Brooks is an active participant in several professional photography organizations and has been a presenter at Addis Foto Fest in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Africa Foto Fair in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. He also served as the national chairman for the 2021 National Press Photographers Association’s Best of Photojournalism contest and is a board member of the Social Documentary Network.
