Julia Rendleman | SIU

School of Journalism and Advertising

Julia Rendleman is a working photojournalist freelancing for national publications such as the Washington Post and New York Times. She freelanced full-time for six years in Richmond, Virginia where she covered politics, elections, the affordable housing crisis, substance abuse and rehabilitation, climate change and other topics relating to human health and community. Before that, she was a staff photographer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Houma Courier & Daily Comet in southwest Louisiana.

Her work is often grant-funded. She was selected for the New York Portfolio review in March, 2019. She is the July 2019 Project Support Awardee of the DocumentaryProjectFund for her personal project "Down the Pike," a series about American housing insecurity. She was a September 2017 grantee of the Howard G. Buffett Fund for Women Journalists, investigating the implications of drug use and drug policy on women as it relates to the opioid crisis. Julia has received three grants from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting: One for a video story about the effects global economics have on Jamaican farmers, another for a photo essay about Bhutanese refugees living in Nepal and for a series about a woman navigating addiction recovery in prison. In 2010, she was named a Getty Images Emerging Talent Photographer. That same year she received a Getty Images Grant for Editorial Photography for a story about a women’s prison in southern Illinois.

She has received hostile environment training through Reuters (2019) and is FAA Part 107 Drone Certified. Julia is a member of ARGO, a photo collective and Women Photograph. She received her BA from Loyola University New Orleans in political science and is a proud alumna of SIUC's school of journalism and advertising, where she earned her MS in 2010.