Cammie Toloui was born and raised in San Francisco, California. She holds a degree in photojournalism from San Francisco State University, where she also taught photography.

Her work as a documentary photographer has taken her to Russia, where she photographed punks and biker gangs; England, where she documented life on the streets of London; and in America, where she shot inside ambulances, strip clubs and other public/private worlds. She delights in exploring and exposing taboos, finding humor in unexpected juxtapositions and discovering a subject’s unguarded truth.

Her work has been shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and New York’s New Museum of Contemporary Art, among others. Internationally, her work has been shown at Tate Modern in London, Galerie Shmorévaz in Paris and most recently as part of the Biennale della Fotografia Femminile in Italy.

Early in her career she won the New York Times Award for Excellence in Photojournalism. Her book $5 for 3 Minutes (published in 2021 by Void) was shortlisted in the 2022 Rencontres d'Arles Book Award and in 2024, Cammie was delighted to win the Fotobus Library Award for Best Photobook of the Year.