I am a polymath in a world that prefers specialization. I am Professor Emerita of Photography, and the former Chair of the Photography Department at Parsons School of Design in New York City; a copyright lawyer; documentary photographer and author of four books: Documentary Photography Reconsidered: History, Theory and Practice; The Routledge Companion to Copyright and Creativity in the 21st Century; Photography 4.0: A Teaching Guide for the 21st Century; and Photography as Activism: Images for Social Change, which was selected by Rice University in Houston, Texas as the Fall 2014 Common Reading, the Institution’s practice of selecting one book to be read by all incoming students.
I regularly write, lecture and teach classes and workshops on copyright and photography. My photographs and/or writing have been published in books, including the Time-Life Annual photography series, The Family of Women, Beauty Bound, The Design Dictionary (Birkhauser Press, 2008) and photographer Trey Ratcliffe’s monograph, Light Falls like Bits. My photographs have been featured in group shows: The Way We Work at the Lawrence O’Brien Gallery in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. and Beauty Culture at the Annenberg Space for Photography in LA. I serve or have served on the boards of non-profits devoted to photography, including Social Documentary Network (SDN), and the Society for Photographic Education, the only professional group in the U.S. dedicated to photographic education. I am currently finishing a 2nd edition of Photography as Activism and working on an on-going photographic project on Family Farms, released in Instagram as The Farm Stories.