Amy Touchette is a photographer based in Brooklyn who explores themes of social connectedness through street portraiture. Trained at the International Center of Photography (ICP), she began her artistic career as a writer and painter, earning a BA in Literature and Studio Art and an MA in Literature. She is represented by CLAMP in New York City and Little Big Galerie in Paris, France. 

Amy’s second monograph, Personal Ties: Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, published in January 2022 by Schilt Publishing (Amsterdam), was shortlisted for the Lucie Photo Book Prize 2022 and garnered a Critical Mass 2021 Top 50. Her first monograph, Shoot the Arrow: A Portrait of The World Famous *BOB*,  published in 2013 by Un-Gyve Press (Boston), was featured in la Repubblica, Esquire Magazine, Vogue Italia, and elsewhere. She has also been published in The New York Times, the New York Observer, and The Guardian, and in the books Women Street Photographers (Prestel, 2021) and Brooklyn Photographs Now (Rizzoli, 2018).

Amy’s photographs have exhibited nationally and internationally, including at MoMA-Moscow, Leica Gallery-Warszawa, Hamburg Triennial of Photography, and in the U.S. Embassies in Vienna, Austria, and Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. Images from Personal Ties: Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, debuted at the National Portrait Gallery in London, England, 2019-2020, as part of the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize exhibition and were included in an article on Artsy about Amy’s approach to street photography. In 2021, an image from Personal Ties: Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn was made into a 8’ x 5’ flag and flown at the iconic Rockefeller Center rink as part of Aperture’s “The Flag Project.”

Amy regularly gives artist lectures and public talks on the topic of photographing on the street, most recently at Fotografiska Museum, on the occasion of Vivian Maier’s exhibition there, and the School of Visual Arts’ Masters in Digital Photography i3 Lecture series. She teaches street portraiture in ICP’s full-time Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism program and in the Open Education program year round.

Amy is currently at work on several medium-format street photography series, as well as Street Dailies, her ongoing series of impromptu portraits of strangers, which are released regularly on Instagram. Hugely inspired by her home-base, she culled images of New Yorkers from this series to create NYC Street Dailies, a one-of-a-kind deck of playing cards that celebrates NYC residents. Each card features a unique portrait, and each suit is dedicated to some of her favorite muses: grannies (spades), workers (diamonds), twins and sets (clubs), and quintessential, beloved NYC characters (hearts).