Stephen Marc is a Professor in the School of Art at Arizona State University, where he joined the faculty in 1998. For twenty years (1978-1998) he taught in the Department of Photography at Columbia College Chicago, and for the final fifteen years, he was the director/coordinator of the graduate photo program. He received his M.F.A. from Tyler School of Art, Temple University (1978), and his B.A. from Pomona College (1976). His work bridges documentary photography and digital imaging, with reoccurring emphasis on visual explorations of the African diaspora. Marc’s work and talent are recognized by Olympus, which has chosen him as one of a select group of photographers to whom they provide the latest in digital photographic equipment, free of charge. Recently Marc has been actively involved in community based projects, which are often related to his current investigation of the Underground Railroad. Projects that he has been involved with over the past year include:

Marc was awarded the Arts Midwest Fellowship (regional NEA) in 1991 and Illinois Arts Council Fellowships in 1998, 1991, and 1988. He received an Aaron Siskind Foundation Fellowship (1996), the Chicago Seagram’s Commission for African American Perspectives (1995), and the Eli Weingart Chicago Grant (1983), a one time award through The Friends of Photography and Automated Concepts Inc.

Marc has published two photography monographs. The first, Urban Notions (1983), investigated African American life in the Midwestern communities where he was raised. The second book is titled The Black Trans-Atlantic Experience: Street Life and Culture in Ghana, Jamaica, England, and the United States (1992). It was a contemporary documentation of the African diaspora that focused on four countries that were important historic links in the British slave trade route. His intent was to produce a visual record of the collective black community. The book containing 88 photographs, was favorably reviewed by Photo District News, Visual Anthropology, reView (newsletter of The Friends of Photography), and Afrique Newsmagazine.

In 2001, he was an Artist in Residence at the Center for Photography at Woodstock. He participated in the Chicago in the Year 2000 documentary project funded by the Corner Foundation, and was also an artist in residence at CEPA Gallery in Buffalo, NY. This CEPA residency resulted in the 2001 Awakened in Buffalo montage series, which combined photographs of people and places of Buffalo, with sites connected to the Underground Railroad in the Buffalo/Niagara region. It was shown as one of the solo projects in both parts of the Paradise in Search of a Future exhibition at CEPA Gallery, toured on city buses, and later traveled to The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. In 1987, he was selected to be part of the Focus/Infinity Fund’s Changing Chicago documentary project.

Additional selected solo exhibitions include: the Photo Passage of the Harbourfront Centre in Toronto (2002), the Culpeper Gallery at Henry Street Settlement in NYC (2001), and the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, FL (2001). In 1998, his solo exhibition at Houston Fotofest was hosted by the Community Artists Collective, and in 1997 at The Center for African American History and Culture of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

Group exhibitions of note include Constellation, an invitational exhibition celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Center for Photography at Woodstock (2002), and three which were accompanied by book publications; Committed to the Image: Contemporary Black Photographers at the Brooklyn Museum of Art (2001); Game Face: Women in Athletics at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. (2001); and Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers at the Smithsonian Institution’s Center for African History and Culture in Washington D.C. (2000).

Printed material include The Black Female Body: a photographic history (2002) book by Deborah Willis and Carla Williams; Robert Hirsch’s Photographic Possibilities (2001), and features in the SPE journal Exposure (2002), Fotophile (2001), Camera Arts (2000), and Phoenix (2003) magazines.

Marc has delivered numerous lecture and panel presentations including being the Keynote Speaker for the Arizona Art Education Association Annual Conference in Sedona, and in New York, at the 2002 National Graduate Seminar’s The Projected Image: Visual to Political, hosted by the Columbia University School of the Arts and the International Photography Institute, where he was a solo presenter and roundtable panelist. He presented at the Photo Marketing Association’s Photo Imaging Education Association (PMA/PIEA) National Convention in Orlando, FL as the featured speaker during the annual meeting in 2001, and was in Imagemaker for the Society for Photographic Education National Conference (SPE) in Savannah, GA. In 2000, Marc was a panelist for the “Technology in Photography, Converging Images: Printmaking and Photography in African American Art” symposium, in Washington, D.C., hosted by Howard University and the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Museum and the Center for African American History and Culture.

Marc served on the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) panel for Visual Arts Access, Education, and Heritage & Preservation reviews (2002 and 2000), and as a Photography Fellowship panelist for both the Illinois Arts Council (2002) and the Ohio Arts Council (1992). Currently, he serves on the digital advisory board of Yavapai College in Sedona, AZ and the photography advisory committee of the East Valley Institute of Technology in Mesa, AZ. Finally for the 1999-2003 term, he was on the national advisory board for the Society for Photographic Education.