Born in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1951, my interest in photography was sparked by my father, a cardiologist and professor of medicine who was an avid photo enthusiast. Dad had a photographic darkroom built into our 1957 home and taught me camera operation, black and white film, color slide and printing processes. I didn’t take the medium seriously until my first camera purchase in high school and during college, as an undergrad, my interest increased. At that time there was no photography program at the University of Arkansas so I finished with a Psychology BA. After graduation I continued study by taking art and art history classes and shared a studio in Fayetteville with a friend who was a painter. In 1977 the university created a photography program under the guidance of Chicagoan Michael Peven. Thanks to his guidance and encouragement, I was accepted to the MFA graduate program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. While there I studied and taught with Ken Josephson and Joyce Neimanas who both helped me develop my aesthetic and teaching sensibilities. In 1980 I graduated from SAIC and a year later I was hired as Professor of Photography at LSU in Baton Rouge. In 1982 I accepted a professorship at Tarrant County College in Fort Worth from which I retired as Emeritus Professor in 2016.

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My work has always been concerned with personal experience: family, friends, neighborhood, community. I never pursued commercial work, preferring to concentrate on photographing what I found compelling in my sphere.

 

Personal

Born - Little Rock, Arkansas, 1951

Wife - Jan Henderson Doherty, married 1977

Home - Dallas, Texas

Children - John Robert Doherty of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (architect),  b.1985; Kathleen Elise Cohen (physician) of Window Rock, Arizona, b. 1988

Grandchildren - James Everett Doherty b. 2019; Frances Ann Cohen, b. 2019, Elijah Clyde Cohen, b. 2022

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Employment

2016 - present: Emeritus Professor of Photography, Tarrant County College, Ft Worth, Texas

1982 - 2016: Professor of Photography, Tarrant County College, Ft Worth, Texas

1981 - 82: Assistant Professor of Photography, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana

 

Collections

The Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

The Arkansas Museum of Fine Art, Little Rock, Arkansas

The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

The Bellevue Art Museum, Bellevue, Washington

The Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, France

The Chicago Center for Contemporary Photography, Chicago, Illinois

The Dallas Historical Society, Dallas, Texas

The Dallas Independent School District Archive, Dallas, Texas

The First Gibraltar Bank, Dallas, Texas

The Fort Worth Independent School District Archive, Fort Worth, Texas

The International Polaroid Collection, Cambridge, Massachusetts

The Illinois State Museum, Springfield, Illinois

The Lamar Dodd Art Center, La Grange, Georgia

The Longview Art Museum, Longview, Texas

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas

The Ruttenberg Foundation, Chicago, Illinois

The Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, Rhode Island

The Tokyo Designer’s Gaukin School, Tokyo, Japan

The University of North Texas Special Collections (my entire photographic archive), Denton, Texas

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