Alan Berner has degrees in philosophy and photojournalism from the University of Missouri.

A staff photographer at The Seattle Times for four decades, Berner has worked for five newspapers in his career including the Columbia (Missouri) Daily Tribune, Kingdom Daily News in Fulton, Missouri, The Muskegon (Michigan) Chronicle and the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson.

He has been involved in numerous projects of social concern including coverage of Washington’s American Indian tribes, the homeless in Seattle and environmental issues. 

The National Press Photographers Association named him the Regional Press Photographer of the Year seven times. The Cowles Cup, the Associated Press Sweepstakes Award for Oregon and Washington, has been awarded to him five times.

He received the NPPA / Nikon Documentary Sabbatical Grant for a project on the American West. He has been a faculty member of the Missouri Photo Workshop, the National Press Photographer’s Flying Short Course, the Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar and Alaska Journalism Week. 

Berner was a contributor to The Seattle Times’ 2010 and 2015 Pulitzer Prizes in Breaking News. 

His images have been exhibited at the Seattle Art Museum and the St. Louis Art Museum. He believes Robert Frank’s “The Americans” is the most influential work in photography of the past six decades and wishes he had the first French edition—and a print, signed.