Faculty members bring their professional experience to students in the classroom. Read about their recent accomplishments.
Photography Faculty
Mary Anne Redding
Chair, Photography Department
Advanced Certificate in Museum Studies, Arizona State University, Tempe
MLS, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
MA, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
BA, Ohio University
Mary Anne Redding has more than 26 years’ experience as a curator, archivist, librarian, educator, and arts administrator. She served as the curator of photography for the Palace of the Governors/New Mexico History Museum from March 2007 through December 2011, where she curated the exhibitions Contemplative Landscape (October 2011–December 2012) and Through the Lens: Creating Santa Fe (November 2008–October 2009). She also curated A Passionate Light: The Polaroids of H. Joe Waldrum at the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History and the New Mexico History Museum (January–April 2011), as well as the concurrent shows Separating Species and Grasslands at 516 Arts in Albuquerque (October–December 2009). Redding co-authored the book Through the Lens: Creating Santa Fe, and she has written and published numerous essays on photography and contemporary art, including the Introduction for Light in the Desert: Photographs from the Monastery of Christ in the Desert by Tony O’Brien and Christopher Merrill. Redding is currently working with photographer Michael Berman on a book about the Gila Wilderness, to be published by the Museum of New Mexico Press in the fall of 2012. She has taught at Arizona State University and New Mexico State University.
David Scheinbaum
Faculty, Artist-in-Residence
BA, City University of New York
David Scheinbaum worked with the preeminent photo historian Beaumont Newhall and is the co-executor of his estate. His photographs appear in the books Bisti, Miami Beach: Photographs of an American Dream; Ghost Ranch: Land of Light; and Images in the Heavens, Patterns on the Earth: The I Ching.
He has exhibited internationally and is represented in many collections, including the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe; the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas; the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris; the Brooklyn Museum in New York; and the Center of Creative Photography in Tucson. With his wife, Janet Russek, he operates Scheinbaum & Russek Ltd., private fine art photography dealers and consultants in Santa Fe.
Read more about Scheinbaum in the Black & White Magazine article "Scheinbaum's Shoes" by Michael More.
Alex Emmons
Faculty, Photography Department
MFA, Arizona State University
BA, Denison University
Alex Emmons grew up in rural upstate New York, near the Catskill Mountains. As primarily a lens-based artist, she incorporates photographic media in her creative research. Conceptually, she surveys ideas related to domestic space, displacement, and the space “in between.” Emmon’s is represented by Alan Klotz Gallery in New York. Her recent curatorial project, Repercussions: Tides & Time, traveled to three venues over the past year: SOIL Art Gallery in Seattle, Washington, Sarah Spurgeon Gallery at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington, and GRCC Collins Art Gallery at Grand Rapids Community College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In the past year, Emmons presented at several conferences, including the SPE SW Regional Panel in Portland, Oregon; the Hawaii International Conference on Art and Humanities in Honolulu; and Foundations in Art: Theory & Education in St. Louis, Missouri. Alex Emmons’ work has been exhibited both internationally and nationally; most recently, she exhibited with students as part of the Pingyao International Photography Festival 2011 in Pingyao, China.
Steve Fitch
Faculty, Photography Department
MA, The University of New Mexico
BA, University of California
Steve Fitch has exhibited his photographs nationally and internationally. His work is included in more than 30 public collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York's Museum of Modern Art, the National Museum of American Art, and the George Eastman House. He has also received many awards, including three National Endowment for the Arts fellowships and the Eliot Porter Fellowship.
Fitch photographs the vernacular of the American West. A traveling exhibition of his photographs was organized in conjunction with the publication of his book Gone: Photographs of Abandonment on the High Plains. Previous books of his photographs include Diesels and Dinosaurs: Photographs from the American Highway; Marks in Place: Contemporary Responses to Rock Art; and Vintage Neon (to which he was a contributor).
Chris Nail
Contributing Faculty and Technician, Photography Department
BFA, Santa Fe University of Art and Design
Chris Nail has more than eight years experience as a museum educator, having developed programs for institutions such as SITE Santa Fe and the Art Museum of Western Virginia.
He has also worked as an independent educational consultant for arts organizations. His current bodies of work focus on formal examinations of utilitarian structures and portraits of small agricultural communities in south central and south eastern Kansas.
Tony O'Brien
Faculty, Photography Department
BA, Santa Fe University of Art and Design
Tony O'Brien was born in New York City and has made his home in Santa Fe for the past 30 years. He began his photography career in 1973. His work has appeared in LIFE, Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times Magazine, among many other national and international publications.
He has documented the lives of drug addicts and prostitutes on the streets of Washington, D.C., and New York; the struggle of Afghan rebels fighting the Soviet occupation of their country; and a British expedition climbing Mount Everest. O'Brien spent six months in the Middle East in 1991, covering the Persian Gulf for LIFE. He spent a year documenting the life of Christ in the Desert, a small northern New Mexico Benedictine community. He returned to Afghanistan in 2003 and 2007 to work with filmmaker and co-author Mike Sullivan on their children's book, Afghan Dreams: Young Voices of Afghanistan, published by Bloomsbury Press in the fall of 2008.
O'Brien's photography has been exhibited at the National Heritage Museum in Lexington, Massachusetts; The Adham Center, Sony Gallery for Photography in Cairo, Egypt; the Atrium Gallery at the Marion Center of Photographic Arts in Santa Fe; and the Newseum in Washington, D.C., among others.
In 1990, he won the first Eliot Porter Foundation Grant for his work in Afghanistan. He created and was director of the Documentary Studies program at the Marion Center of Photographic Arts, Santa Fe University of Art and Design. O'Brien also teaches photography workshops in Santa Fe and abroad. He is represented by VERVE Gallery of Photography in Santa Fe. He is presently working on two books, one about children along the U.S./Mexico border and another about contemplative life to be published by the Museum of New Mexico Press.
