Background
David Avison was born in 1937 in Harrisonburg, Virginia, United States.
designer Photographer physicist teacher
David Avison was born in 1937 in Harrisonburg, Virginia, United States.
Avison received an ScB in 1959 from MIT, Cambridge, and a PhD in physics at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1966. Three years later he decided to abandon his career in physics and commit himself totally to photography, which he then studied at the Institute of Design (Illinois Institute of Technology) in Chicago, earning an MS.
Since 1970 Avison has been teaching photography at Columbia College in Chicago. Prior to that he taught physics at Purdue University, Indiana (1967-69), and at Brown University (1960-66). When a physicist, Avison wrote several articles on acoustics and high-energy theory. During the years 1970-72 he invented and constructed a special panoramic camera. For ten years Avison has been especially interested in the "possibility of the long-format/wide- angle image by photographing with the special panoramic cameras" which he designed and built for that purpose.
His several memberships include SPE, the Chicago Artists' Coalition, the Optical Society of Chicago, and the Society of Photographic Scientists and Engineers, for whom he has served as a board member.
He was predominantly influenced by the work of Garry Winogrand and Fredrick Sommer.