Learn more about award-winning photographer Susan Watts

Susan Watts is an award-winning photojournalist working in New York City for more than 25 years, spending 23 years on the photo staff of the New York Daily News covering top local, national and international news stories.

She currently works as the Director of Visual Content for the Office of the New York City Comptroller producing and overseeing all creative content.

Watts has been honored with awards from the World Press Photo, the National Press Photographers Association, the Pictures of the Year International, the Scripps Howard Foundation, the Associated Press, The Newswomen’s Club of New York, the New York Press Photographers Association, The Deadline Club and the New York Press Club – receiving First Prize, Best in Show and ‘Photographer of the Year’ honors.

Her photographs have been widely exhibited in solo shows and group shows both domestically and internationally including Visa pour L’Image, the acclaimed photojournalism festival in Perpignan, France. Watts’ September 11th work from the World Trade Center attack is archived in the permanent photography collections of the Smithsonian Institution and the Library of Congress. She lectures frequently and has appeared on ABC’s World News Tonight, CNN, NBC’s Today in New York, C-SPAN, NY-1 News and the Lifetime Channel.

In 2019 she received The Louis Liotta Lifetime Achievement Award from the New York Press Photographers Association for outstanding service and leadership in the field of photojournalism in the City of New York.

In 2007, Watts produced a groundbreaking public photo exhibition in New York City’s historic Battery Park titled “Milestones to Recovery.” Her project, sponsored by The Alliance for Downtown New York, was a photographic celebration of the rebirth and revitalization of Lower Manhattan in the years following the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. The unprecedented exhibition of the thirty 4ft. x 6ft. photographs was displayed in the park for six months.

From June 1997 until June 1999, Watts served as the first woman president in the 100-year history of the New York Press Photographers Association.

In addition to the Daily News, her work has appeared in magazines including LIFE, Newsweek, New York Magazine, US News & World Report, GQ, The Sunday Times Magazine, People, L’Express, Marie Claire and PHOTO.

A native New Yorker, Watts attended New York University and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film & Television. She lives in Manhattan with her daughter Beatrice.