Background
Al Balinsky was born in 1946 in New York City, New York, United States.
Al Balinsky was born in 1946 in New York City, New York, United States.
Balinsky completed an MFA in Photography at Brooklyn College (1977), where he had also earned his bachelor's degree (1969). From 1970 to 1971 he studied at the Brooklyn Museum Art School in New York.
Since 1977 he has been living in Wisconsin, where he is currently teaching at the Milwaukee Center for Photography and is also employed by the Inner City Arts Council to document Milwaukee's inner city. He worked previously in the same city as the coordinator of the Photography Program of the Children's Outing Association and as the founder and the exhibition committee member of the Perihelion Photographic Gallery. In 1977 he was artist-in-residence at the Mark Twain School for the Gifted and Talented in Brooklyn. The previous year he was hired by the Brooklyn Museum as an assistant curator for the Lewis Hine retrospective and was also research assistant for the Lewis Hine monograph that was published by Aperture. His experience covers some work in Mexico: in 1977 he was a photographer for the Tourist Board in Pâtzcuaro, and in 1975 he documented the Purepecha Indians of Uruapan under the direction of the anthropologist Ricardo Reyes Cerda.
Balinsky is a founding member of the Perihelion Photo Gallery in Milwaukee.