Prior to photography, Donald Weber originally trained as an architect and worked with urban theorist Rem Koolhaas’ Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He freelanced for the international press in places as diverse as Africa, Eastern Europe, Russia and South America before taking aim at the bigger picture: the growth of insoluble World Power. He has since devoted himself to the study of how Power deploys an all-encompassing theater for its subjects; what he records is its secret collaboration with both masters and victims.

Recent major projects include The Underclass and Its Bosses: Crime & Punishment in Ukraine; Bastard Eden, Our Chernobyl, which won the photolucida Book Award; The Drunken Bride, Russia Unveiled, completed on a Guggenheim Fellowship; City of Cities, examining the future city in 2050. His first book, Bastard Eden, Our Chernobyl, (photolucida) was released in 2008; His forthcoming book, Interrogations, (Schilt) about post-Soviet authority in Ukraine and Russia, released in Fall, 2011.

His work has appeared in numerous international publications including Amica, Der Speigel, The Guardian, Newsweek, New York Times, New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Stern, Time and The Walrus. He has worked with the NGO’s Medecins sans Frontieres, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and War Child. Weber’s photography projects have been exhibited at festivals and galleries worldwide including the United Nations, Museum of the Army at Les Invalides in Paris, the Portland Museum of Art and the Alice Austen House Museum in New York. His photographs are in the permanent collection of the Portland Museum of Art and the Museum of Memory and Tolerance in Mexico City.

Weber is the recipient of the Lange Taylor Documentary Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Chalmers Fellowship and a World Press award, amongst others. Other major awards include the Duke and Duchess of York Photography Prize, PDN’s 30 and was named an Emerging Photo Pioneer by American Photo.