Amy Toensing is a renowned American photojournalist and filmmaker, born to lawyer and GOP operative Victoria Toensing and step-daughter of her law partner Joseph DiGenova. She currently resides in the Hudson Valley of New York with her husband Matt Moyer, also a photojournalist.
Amy Toensing's educational background includes a bachelor's degree in human ecology from the College of the Atlantic in Maine, which she earned before commencing her professional career in 1994 as a staff photographer at her hometown paper, The Valley News in New Hampshire. She later transitioned to covering Capitol Hill and the White House under the presidency of Bill Clinton, working for The New York Times.
Amy Toensing then left D.C. in 1998 to pursue her master's degree from the School of Visual Communication at Ohio University. Upon completion of her graduate studies, she began contributing to National Geographic magazine, publishing 13 feature stories over a decade, and covering diverse cultures worldwide, including the last cave dwelling tribe of Papua New Guinea, the Māori people of New Zealand, and the Kingdom of Tonga.
Her extensive portfolio also includes documenting the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and Muslim women living in Western culture. Amy Toensing dedicated more than four years to documenting Indigenous Australians, which was published in the June 2013 edition of National Geographic. She is one of 11 women featured in National Geographic's ongoing traveling exhibition, Women of Vision, showcasing a diversity of photos from the magazine's most accomplished women photojournalists.
In addition to her acclaimed photojournalism work, Amy Toensing is a dedicated teacher, instructing photography to kids and young adults in underserved communities. Her teaching endeavors include collaborations with nonprofit organization Vision Workshops, where she has worked on projects such as teaching photography to Somali and Sudanese refugees in Maine and Burmese refugees in Baltimore. She has also traveled to Islamabad to teach young Pakistanis photojournalism and cover their own communities.
