Background

Alex Sweetman was born on December 8, 1946, in Greenlawn, New York, United States.

Education

Alex Sweetman received a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from New York University, New York City (1970), and a Master of Fine Arts from the Visual Studies Workshop State University of New York in Buffalo (1975).

Career

Since 1976 Alex Sweetman has been an assistant professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has also taught at IIT Institute of Design (ID) at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) (1978, 1976), Columbia College, Chicago (1976), and State University College of New York, Buffalo.

Alex Sweetman has produced major pieces of public art and a wide range of limited editions from letterpress. He has curated numerous exhibitions including the seminal exhibition at the California Museum of Photography in 1984 of a 375 book of the history of the photographic book.

Achievements

• His creative work is in the permanent collections of over three dozen museums in the US and abroad. For over 40 years Alex Sweetman has focused on the phenomenon of photo publishing and has worked to assemble one of the largest and finest public collections of its kind in the world. His photographic work over the last 30 years has been in panoramic color photography in the US and Mexico, which he is currently archiving and printing digitally.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Photographic Book to Photobookwork: 140 Years of Photography in Publication

    (California Museum of Photography Bulletin: Volume 5, Numb...)

    1986
  • Chimayo: Lourdes of New Mexico

Connections

Friend:

Nathan Lyons

Alex Sweetman did his graduate work with Nathan Lyons at the Visual studies workshop, in Rochester, New York.