Frank Van Riper is an award-winning documentary and fine art photographer, journalist, author and lecturer whose work has been published internationally.
His photographs are in the permanent collections of the National Portrait Gallery (Washington, DC) as well as in the Portland Museum of Art (Portland, Maine.) His 1998 book of photography and essays, Down East Maine/A World Apart, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and won the silver award for photography from the Art Director’s Club of Metropolitan Washington. A portfolio of images from this book is promised to the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
His latest book is Recovered Memory: New York & Paris 1960-1980, which immediately became an Amazon bestseller. His previous book, done in collaboration with his wife and professional partner Judith Goodman was Serenissima: Venice in Winter, a coffee table collection of black and white photographs and essays, published in 2008 both in the US and Italy. (www.veniceinwinter.com)
Van Riper, a native New Yorker (b.1946), was a member of the New York Daily News Washington Bureau for 20 years, serving as White House correspondent, national political correspondent, and Washington Bureau news editor. A 1979 Nieman Fellow at Harvard, Van Riper left daily journalism in 1987 to begin a new career, partnering with his wife in commercial and documentary photography. In 1992, Van Riper became a photography columnist of the Washington Post, where his column, “Talking Photography,” appeared in the Camera Works section of Washingtonpost.com and is now available worldwide at www.TalkingPhotography.com. Talking Photography, a ten-year collection of his columns and other photography writing was published in 2002.
A popular teacher and lecturer, Van Riper is on the faculty of PhotoWorks at Glen Echo Park, Md., and has lectured and/or taught in the Smithsonian Resident Associate Program, the Maine Photographic Workshops, the University of Maine at Machias and at other colleges and universities in the mid-Atlantic. In May 2011, Van Riper was inducted into the City College of New York Communications Alumni Hall of Fame. Singly and together, Van Riper and his wife lead photography workshops in Washington, DC, Maine, and in Umbria, Italy.
