Joanna Lipper is a an award-winning filmmaker, photographer, and author of the book "Growing Up Fast."


Joanna Lipper is a filmmaker, photographer and author. As a Visiting Lecturer at Harvard University she is currently teaching Using Film For Social Change. She received a grant from The MacArthur Foundation and from 2012 Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund for her documentary film, "The Supreme Price" (2014).

Joanna Lipper Photographer, Filmmaker and Author.

Lipper's first documentary "Inside Out: Portraits of Children" won the Prix Jeune Public at Marseille Vue Sur Les Docs as well as the Hollywood Discovery Award and a Certificate of Merit for Best Film in the Category of Sociology at The San Francisco International Film Festival. This film played in the New Documentaries Series at MoMA and aired on The Sundance Channel.

Her second documentary, "Growing Up Fast", focused on teen mothers living in a post-industrial New England city in the wake of downsizing and globalization and the region's loss of its manufacturing base. This was the inspiration for her nationally acclaimed book combining text and photographs, "Growing Up Fast" published by Picador in 2003. The documentary film played at museums and conferences across the United States and is distributed by Films For The Humanities and Sciences. The Jane Pauley Show (NBC) devoted a segment to documenting the grassroots impact of the book and film in the arena of teen pregnancy and parenthood prevention.

Ms. Lipper's debut feature film "Little Fugitive" was released by Cinema Libre Studio in September 2008.

Her photographic series, "Seaweed Farmers in Zanzibar" was featured in Economica: Picturing Power and Potential, a group exhibition presented by the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery and The International Museum of Women in Summer of 2010. This series along with a related multimedia installation was featured in a solo show at Photo De Mer in Vannes, France (April 2011).