Tomas van Houtryve
Tomas van Houtryve is a Belgian visual artist, director and cinematographer working mainly with photography and video. He is an Emeritus member of the VII Photo Agency, and a Contributing Artist for Harper's Magazine. Life and career Van Houtryve attended a university in Nepal, studying philosophy. He became internationally known for his photographs of the Maoist rebellion in Nepal, winning the Visa pour l'Image Ville de Perpignan award in 2006 and the Bayeux Calvados-Normandy Award for war correspondents in 2006. Van Houtryve next embarked on a seven-year photographic project to document life in the last countries where the Communist Party still remained in power: North Korea, Cuba, China, Nepal, Vietnam, and Laos. In 2010 he was named Photographer of the Year in the Pictures of the Year International Competition. A monograph of the work titled Behind the Curtains of 21st Century Communism was published in 2012. Van Houtryve then turned his interest to the US military's use of surveillance drones with a series titled Blue Sky Days. Supported by a Getty Editorial Grant of $10,000, he used his own modified drone in the US to explore the implications of surveillance techniques used by the US both outside and within its