Frank Van Riper
Frank Van Riper is an award-winning documentary and fine art photographer, journalist and author whose work has been published internationally.
His work is in the permanent collections of the National Museum of American Art and the National Portrait Gallery (Washington, DC) as well as 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 medal for photography from the Art Director’s Club of Metropolitan Washington.
His latest book, done in collaboration with his wife and professional partner, Judith Goodman, is 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, 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 photography columnist of the Washington Post, where his column, “Talking Photography,” appeared in the Camera Works section of Washingtonpost.com (www.TalkingPhotography.com) His book, Talking Photography, a ten-year collection of his columns and other photography writing, was published in 2001.
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 2009 he and his wife inaugurated the Lubec Photo Workshops at SummerKeys, a series of small, week-long, user-friendly summer classes in Lubec, Maine, administered by the SummerKeys Music Workshops. www.summerkeys.com
In October, 2010, they also inaugurated The Umbria Photo Workshops, their first international photography workshop in Umbria, Italy. www.experienceumbria.com
This year, Van Riper was inducted into the City College of New York Communications Alumni Hall of Fame.