Gregory Halpern

Gregory Halpern, an esteemed American photographer, has dedicated his career to exploring the elusive concept of Americanness. Renowned for his innovative photobooks, recent publications such as ZZYZX and Omaha Sketchbook exemplify Halpern's lyrical and poetic investigations into place.

The celebrated photobook ZZYZX, published in 2016, delves into the landscape and people of Southern California, named after an 'unincorporated community' in the Mojave desert. The project unfolds from the eastern fringes of California to Los Angeles and, ultimately, the Pacific. Omaha Sketchbook compiles photographs captured in Omaha, Nebraska over 15 years, offering a lyrical response to the American Heartland—a meditation on America, its inhabitants, and the dynamics of aggression, inadequacy, and power.

Born in 1977 in New York State, Halpern earned a BA in History and Literature from Harvard University in 1999 and an MFA from California College of the Arts, San Francisco in 2004. His other notable books include A (2001), Harvard Works Because We Do (2003), East of the Sun, West of the Moon (2014) in collaboration with Ahndraya Parlato, Confederate Moons (2018), and Let The Sun Beheaded Be (2020). He co-edited The Photographer’s Playbook: Over 250 Assignments and Ideas in 2014 with Jason Fulford. In 2014, Halpern received a Guggenheim Fellowship, and ZZYZX was awarded Photobook of the Year at the Paris Photo Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards in 2016. Joining Magnum Photos as an Associate Member in 2018, he currently serves as a professor of photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York.

Gregory Halpern resides and works in New York.