Biography
For the past twenty years I have served as an Adjunct Professor in the Photography Department, in the School of Visual and Performing Arts of Columbia College Chicago, where I earned an M.F.A. in Fine Art Photography in 1998.
As a freelance journalist and photographer I enjoy working in dual disciplines, writing and photographing arts and culture features as a a regular contributor for the Chicago Tribune, the Pioneer Press, and for a number of magazines that include Inspired Living, Lakeland Boating, Sheridan Road and Shore.
As an accomplished documentary and fine art photographer I am the author of “Between Cultures: Children of Immigrants in America,” (winner of the International Sister Cities Multicultural Book Award for a major still photographic documentary monograph), and a contributing photographer on a number of other photographic monographs that include -- Chicago Portfolio: Where Photography & Geography Meet, and The Spirit of Family, edited by Al & Tipper Gore.
My photographic work has appeared in a vast array of solo exhibitions at venues like The Ellis Island Immigration History Museum in New York City, The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, The New Americans Museum in San Diego, and a year-long exhibition in the International Terminal of O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, among many others.
In addition to college level teaching, I have designed adult continuing education courses in photography for Northwestern University, Loyola University, and overseas in Italy, for the Tuscan Renaissance Center at San Fedele, and for the Fine & Performing Arts Florence Program of Columbia College Chicago.
Degrees
B.S., Business-Marketing Eastern Illinois University 1984
M.F.A., Photography Columbia College Chicago 1999