Jane Cowan

Jane Cowan

Jane Cowan is a photojournalist based in Melbourne, where she works on digital storytelling for ABC News. From 2010 to 2015 she was one of the ABC's North America correspondents, stationed in Washington DC. In 2015, she was part of the Foreign Correspondent team that exposed an unscrupulous surrogacy operator exploiting women in Mexico and defrauding American couples — an award-winning investigative report which was subsequently followed by the New York Times on its front page. But it was in country New South Wales, on Queensland's Gold Coast and in the Northern Territory that Jane cut her journalistic teeth. On Black Saturday in 2009, she was the first television reporter into the destroyed town of Marysville where many of the bushfire's 173 victims perished. Her coverage of the devastation and the resultant inquiry won multiple rewards, including for sensitive reporting of traumatic events. Over her 15-year career, Jane has reported for the ABC from India, Argentina and Mexico as well as across the United States. With a degree in social work and undertaking a masters degree in photography, Jane was recognised as a 2016 finalist in the documentary/photojournalism category of Australia's Top Emerging Photographer awards. She spent the summer of 2016 photographing and telling multimedia stories at newspaper The Virginian-Pilot. Her interest is in the power of photography to move audiences and get beneath the surface of stories.