Pao Houa Her

Pao Houa Her is recognized for her provocative photographs of the Hmong, the indigenous people of Laos who immigrated to the United States following the Vietnam War. Highly personal, Her’s images are not only a narrative extension of her own experience of being born in Laos in 1982 and then fleeing the country with her family at age three, but they also sensitively document the larger ethnic Hmong culture that became increasingly established in various locations in the United States in the late 1970s and 1980s.

Pao Houa Her was born in 1982 in Laos, and was raised in Saint Paul, MN. She currently lives in Lino Lakes, MN a suburb of the Twin Cities. She received a MFA in Photography from the Yale University School of Art, New Haven, CT in 2012 and a BFA in Photography from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2009. Her received a Jerome Fellowship for Emerging Artists in 2013 and was awarded Initiative Grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board in 2009 and 2012. She also received an Alice Kimball Fellowship in 2012.

Since 2012, Her’s photographs have garnered solo exhibitions at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Franklin Artworks in Minneapolis, the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum in East Lansing, MI, and the Center for Hmong Studies, The Gordon Parks Gallery and The Bindery Projects, all in Saint Paul. Her’s photographs have also been featured in group shows at the Telemark Art Center in Skein, Norway, the Minnesota Museum of Art in Saint Paul, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, IL, and the Camera Club of New York in New York City, as well as in galleries in New York and Los Angeles.