2024 Instructor Biographies

This section contains biographies of FOTOfusion presenters that will be present this year.

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Robert Farber

Robert Farber’s style has influenced generations of photographers. His painterly, impressionistic style captures the essence of composition in every genre, including nudes, still life, landscapes, and architecture. His ten photo art books have sold over half a million copies.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis brought Farber into Doubleday for the publication of his book “By The Sea,” which won the Art Director’s Award for color photography. Aside from numerous creative awards, Robert Farber also received the Photographer of the Year from PMA, ASP International Award from the PPA, and The American Society of Photographers. This award was given to those who’ve made a significant contribution to the science and art of photography.
Farber’s fine-art photographs have been published in virtually every form. Farber has exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide. He’s lectured at the Smithsonian Institute, The George Eastman House, as well as Universities and professional groups throughout the United States, Japan, Australia, and Europe. Aside from his fine art photography, Robert Farber’s work encompasses major campaigns for fashion, beauty, and advertising, as well as directing for TV and film. A documentary highlighting Farber’s life and career is in development for PBS.

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Laurence Gartel

Laurence Gartel is known as the FATHER of Digital Art for over 40-years. Gartel has been commissioned to produce work for Coca Cola, Philip Morris, NBA, Walt Disney, Gibson Guitars, Bang & Olufsen, ABSOLUT Vodka, "Think different" for Apple Computer and more. Gartel was the Official Artist for the 57th Annual Grammy Awards, Newport Jazz Festival, Monaco International Film Festival, and Feature of the 113th New York International Auto Show, and Oslo Motor Show in Norway. The Visionary of the 3D Print Conference and Keynote Speaker of the National Art Education Association (NAEA) in San Diego. Gartel's show "Digital Titan" at the Palm Beach Photographic Centre was a "then and now" show of works from 1975 to 2018.

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Angelika Hala

Angelika Hala is a New York photo editor and producer for STERN, Germany’s leading weekly general-interest magazine known for its outstanding photography and original reportage coverage of news, human interest, politics, social issues, sports and entertainment on multi-page spreads. The magazine celebrated its 70th anniversary in 2018. Angelika also works on the magazine’s line extensions CRIME, VIEW and JWD, special editions and book projects. 15+ years, produced photo features with award-winning photographers, helped develop new talent, enjoying the process of creating photographic narratives from single images to multi-page magazine spreads. Angelika is co-producer of Open Show New York.

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Daile Kaplan

Daile Kaplan works with private clients as a curator, adviser, and appraiser and loves teaching workshops about all aspects of photography, including collecting. She is the photographs specialist on "Antiques Roadshow," and has contributed essays to Click!, Photography Changes Everything (Aperture), and Appraising Art: The Definitive Guide (Appraisers Association of America). She began her career as a photographer, subsequently transitioned to curatorial projects, and published several books. Daile directed the Photographs & Photobooks department at a NY auction house for 30 years.

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Lewis Kemper

Lewis Kemper is widely recognized as a photographer, writer, and instructor, lecturing throughout the United States. He currently is a Contributing Editor to Outdoor Photographer. Books include, “Ancient Ancestors of the Southwest”, published by Graphic Arts Center Publishing; “Capturing the Light” which won the People’s Choice Awards in Fine Art in the 2009 Photography Book Now competition; and his “Photographing Yosemite Digital Field Guide” which was voted in the top 20 field guides. Lewis’ training videos have been used by thousands of photographers, helping them with their photographic and post-processing skills. Lewis is currently a “Tamron Ambassador.”

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Erika Larsen

Erika Larsen is a multidisciplinary storyteller who believes that photography is one of the most important ways to explore our understanding of time. She is fascinated by the way we communicate with nature and often focuses on people that maintain strong relationships to the natural world. Her monograph ‘Sami-Walking with Reindeer’, a reflection of her time living in the Scandinavian Arctic, was published in 2013. Larsen was a 2017 Fellow with National Geographic Society for an ongoing project exploring how ritual can help us communicate our relationship to liminality, consciousness, and daily life.

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J. Tomas Lopez

J. Tomas Lopez is Professor and Chair of the Department of Art and Art History. Professor Lopez has degrees in Psychology and Philosophy from Fordham University, a Master of Media Arts in Film and Video, and a Master of Fine Arts in Photography and Modernist Theory from the University of South Florida. He has been awarded the Florida Individual Artist Grant, the Cintas Foundation Fellowship, and the NEA Award in the Visual Arts as well as other national and international fellowships. He is nationally and internationally known for his large-scale digital prints ranging from underwater photographs of the nude figure, politically charged iconic flags, and a series of riders on the Metro system in six cities around the world. Professor Lopez has been showcased in over three hundred fifty group exhibitions and thirty-five solo exhibitions. His work is included in many permanent collections: The Library of Congress, (DC) The Smithsonian Institution, National Gallery of American Art, La Biblioteque Nationale de France (Paris), The International Museum of Photography, the Museum of Modern Art, (NY) and in many other museums, public and private collections.

His work has been exhibited across the United States, Europe, China, Japan, and in numerous publications. He has been with the University of Miami since 1994 where he lives and works with his wife, Carol Todaro.

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Stephen Mallon

Stephen Mallon is a photographer and filmmaker who specializes in the industrial-scale creations of mankind at unusual moments of their life cycles. Mallon’s work blurs the line between documentary and fine art, revealing the industrial landscape to be unnatural, desolate and functional yet simultaneously also human, surprising and inspiring.  His work has been featured in publications and by broadcasters including The New York Times, National Geographic, NBC, The Wall Street Journal, The Daily Mail, MSNBC, The Atlantic,vGQ, CBS, The London Times and Vanity Fair.

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Scott Mc Kiernan

Scott Mc Kiernan, an award winning photojournalist who became an internet and media industry pioneer and leader. Scott’s decades of wide-ranging experience in photography, has proven to be instrumental in establishing the world’s largest independent editorial photo agency: ZUMA Press. Net pioneer of web's first online downloadable database for editorial pictures in 1993. Celebrating it’s 30th anniversary, ZUMA is the agent to the most Pulitzer winners. Also 6,000+ top photo-journalists, 300 newspapers, scores of photo agencies and almost every national wire service. Contributing daily to the largest purely editorial portal, with 75+ million images, adding 30K new images daily, serving the globe. 2016 Mc Kiernan won NPPA's prestigious Jim Gordon Editor of the Year Award, for DOUBLEtruck Magazine (Pictures That Be Seen) and the web's first magazine zReportage.com for Stories That Need to Be Told. Recently awarded by Communication Arts for his stellar photography of the 2018 Winter Olympics. Also, just won the 2022 Lucie Awards (Photography’s Oscars) Photography Content of the YEAR, Print or Online Award for ThePicturesOftheDay.com, ThePicturesOftheMonth.com and ZUMA.PRESS. Proud member of the Board of the Palm Beach Photographic Centre.

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Robert Pledge

Robert Pledge was born in London in 1942. Moved to Paris in 1951. Co-founded Contact Press Images, the international photography ‘boutique agency’ in New York in 1976. Edited acclaimed books including Red-Color News Soldier with Li Zhensheng; 44 Days: Iran and the Remaking of the World with David Burnett; Don McCullin: The impossible Peace with the famed British war photographer; Quelque part en France with picture-editor John G. Morris. Curated major exhibitions throughout the world such as ‘Contact: Photojournalism Since Vietnam’ (New York, Paris, and Beijing, 1987-1988), and Robert Frank’s ‘The Americans in China’ (Pingyao (2007). Former president of the boards of ‘The W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund’ in the USA and the ‘Association Gilles Caron’ and ‘Dotation Catherine Leroy’ in France.

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