Lucas Oleniuk

Lucas Oleniuk is a 31-year-old photographer whose roots lie in the western Canadian prairies of Saskatchewan.

He graduated from the University of Saskatchewan with a degree in English Literature and a minor in art photography in 1999.

Lucas began his career in photography at the Saskatoon Star Phoenix in 2000 before moving on to Hong Kong’s Asiaweek Magazine in 2001. He has been on staff at The Toronto Star newspaper since 2003.

From the seal hunt in Newfoundland to hurricanes in Haiti, Jamaica, Grenada, Texas and New Orleans, Lucas has covered a wide range of environmental issues. He has furthered that coverage with collections from China’s desertified northwest provinces, North America’s industrial hubs and the Southern Patagonian Ice Cap. All three of these projects were self financed and shot on 4x5 negatives. Lucas has also produced work focusing on the native struggle in Canada, violence in Haiti, the Somali crisis and most recently, the Haitian earthquake.

Lucas has twice been selected for the Flash Forward Annual and claimed a POYi first place award for multimedia in 2009. He is also a two-time recipient of the prestigious Canadian National Newspaper Award for photography. His work has been published in numerous Communication Arts and Applied Arts photography annuals. Last year Lucas was selected as a Critical Mass finalist for his collection entitled, " The Greenwall of China".

Lucas is currently building a private darkroom in the east end of Toronto where he plans to "get back to basics".