Mark Steinmetz

“I am more interested in a photography that collaborates with chance events,” Mark Steinmetz has been courting chance since the mid-1980s, keenly observing people and places and capturing them in disarming moments of humor, tenderness, and beauty. Working in series, he has concentrated on such subjects as kids and teenagers, small American towns, summer camp, schoolteachers, and street scenes in Paris and various Italian cities. Though he has worked in color, he concentrates primarily on black-and-white. While most other photographers embrace digital technologies, Steinmetz remains committed to film and to making his own prints in a darkroom, and has been using the same cameras, film, and chemicals throughout his career. “I have a strong emotional response to light and I insist that my prints convey this,” he explains, “so I still rely on film and silver paper.”

Mark Steinmetz received his MFA from Yale University in 1986. He has been published in Aperture, Blind Spot, and DoubleTake magazines and is a Guggenheim fellow. Steinmetz' work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, and The Los Angeles County Museum of Art. His publications include South Central 2007, South East 2008, Greater Atlanta 2009.