A year later, in 1995, Perkins and fellow Post reporter Leon Dash were presented a Pulitzer Prize in the category Explanatory Journalism for their four-year investigation of the consequences of poverty, illiteracy, crime and drug abuse on a three generation family living in the District of Columbia.

[5] In 1996, Perkins won the World Press Photo of the year award for his well-known photograph of a young boy looking out a window on a bus full of refugees, leaving Chechnya, Russia.

[6] In describing the image, The World Press Photo association said "The boy's expression mirrored all that Perkins had experienced and seen himself, and leaning out of his car, he attempted to steady his camera, focus and shoot.

Five years later, Perkins once again shared a second Pulitzer Prize in 2000 in the category Feature Photography with fellow Post photographers Carol Guzy and Michael Williamson.

In 1995, Lucian Perkins co-founded InterFoto, an international photojournalism conference located in Moscow with free-lance photographer Bill Swersey.

In 1996 Perkins and Leon Dash published a book illustrating their Pulitzer Prize–winning investigation titled Rosa Lee : A Mother and Her Family in Urban America.

Internationally, these places would include: World Press Museum in Amsterdam, The ART in Embassies Program in Sarajevo, Bosnia, Havana, Cuba, Tokyo, Japan and Ankara, Turkey.

In the United States, Perkins has work displayed in The Southeast Museum of Photography in Daytona Beach, Newseum in Washington DC, San Francisco and New York City.