I have had the honor to collaborate on prolific projects with some of the best & brightest creative minds in the world, to work with some of the most talented crew in the industry and traveling to 60+ countries and counting. What a long strange trip it’s been!

Since high school, I have zero photo related awards! Zero. Maybe it's because I don't submit. OK, agencies have submitted on my behalf, and won a few. I guess 100% of the competitions that you don't enter, you don't win.

What I can talk up is a really tiny picture, a US Postal Service First Class Forever stamp featuring one of my images. I'm super proud of that stamp! It's also an image of a living person, the blues musician Jimmy "Duck" Holmes. The USPS typically only feature dead people. Congrats, Duck, first of all you're alive, and on a USPS first class stamp!

I was also featured on The CBS Sunday Morning Show that highlighted my “Portraits of Mandated Isolation” project during the first 4 months of the pandemic. That was really cool, except, in normal times I bet that I would've been able to get a lot of work out of that, the response was massive! However, in normal times, I wouldn't have been featured in the first place. And that is what we call a catch-22 folks.

I have two books to my name, Hidden History of Mississippi Blues and Mississippi Juke Joint Confidential: House Parties, Hustlers and Blues Life, both penned by the great music aficionado & author, Roger Stolle. I risked life & limb...and liver for those images. I became a legit moonshine connoisseur on those projects!

I once shot on three continents in a single day. We were shooting for Goldman Sachs. It was a day or two before Thanksgiving and my client wanted to get home and we made it happen! It was a great production, we didn't cut corners and had time to spare! We started out in Istanbul, across the Bosphorus on the Asian side, then photographed a partner of the firm in Milan at the The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II and finally another partner in NYC at 85 Broad. All commercial flights!

Also had some great write-ups and features in the The Huffington Post, a profile on an NBC affiliate, CNN, CBS, MSNBC, Slate, Photo District News, Workbook, Wonderful Machine, DP Review to name just a few. Always appreciative of the shoutouts!

I love dried mango & espresso.

I'm one of only a handful of people to have climbed to the very tip top of the Empire State Building. Think needle & light bulb. I made the climb a couple of times with Tom Silliman. He's a legend. He travels the world maintaining bulbs, antennas and transmission line systems etc. on top of some of the tallest buildings & towers on earth. Everyone who has made the ESB climb signs their name on the metal wall just below the ice shield. I wrote my name close to Keith Haring's name & a small iconic drawing that he drew. It was him:)

Oh and Iwo Jima! I've never met anyone who's been there. It's a closed Japanese military island and lies south of the Bonin Islands. The Battle of Iwo Jima (19 February – 26 March 1945) was a major battle in which the United States Marine Corps and Navy landed on and eventually captured. I climbed Mount Suribachi where the amazing & iconic Joe Rosenthal photo was made. I was shooting for CBS and traveling with Dan Rather & General Schwartzkopf making stills for their WWI documentary....or were they traveling with me;) #namedropper

Lou Bopp's photos have been exhibited at...haha bio's in the third person are so weird because you know who's writing them, they are! Anyway, I digress, let's keep going with the first person narrative here and keep it real; my work has been exhibited at the following fine institutions and many private collections.

National Arts Club | New York City | solo show

Lishui International Photographic Culture Festival | Lishui, China | group show

Missouri History Museum | permanent collection

The National Blues Museum | permanent collection

August House Gallery | Chicago | solo show

Sheldon Art Gallery St. Louis | group show

Highway 61 Blues Museum | Leland, MS | permanent collection

Museum of the City of New York | group show

Cat Head Gallery | Clarksdale, MS | solo show

If you've made it this far, thanks for your interest, you must really care, I would love to hear from you!