I was born with a camera in my hands! Well, not quite, but there was a saying in my family growing up "wherever two or more Husoms are gathered there are two or more cameras." My father, like his father before him was a shutterbug. He had a darkroom in the basement and I learned to develop and print while still in grade school. In junior high I joined the camera club. It was not until I took a photography class in college in January 1968 that I started to think of it as a career choice. On the first day of my beginning photo class the teacher, a young grad student named Jay Hines, came in wearing jeans, a work shirt, boots and "love beads." He sat down cross legged on top of the desk and announced: "Brothers and sisters, this is photography!" I knew right there that is what I wanted to do when I grew up!

I changed my major from Architecture to Art and received a BFA in Photography and Film with a minor in Drawing and Painting from the University of Minnesota. I primarily studied with photographer Jerome Libeling but I had a class from Elaine Mayes at a very important time in my student life. What I learned from both of them was a tremendous respect for the medium of photography and its rich history. But I was also influenced by painters Mario Volpe and Raymond Hendler, both of whom supported my Pop Art paintings. After Jerry and Elaine left for the East-coast and Mario moved to Europe I enrolled in grad school at the U of MN and earned an MFA in Photography and Film with a minor in Art History where I studied with filmmaker Allen Downs, photographer Saul Warkov and art historian and artist Sidney Simon. When I recently read Allen's comment about his work as a documentary photographer I was reminded just how much he influenced me.

At the age of thirty I switched directions from the popular media inspired work I pursued as a student and the non-silver extended media I worked with in grad school to large format color documentary photography. Although very few people were shooting 4X5 color negative film at the time, I had never really worked in black and white—I had always colorized or painted on my photos. So color seemed the logical place to continue to go.

Since that time my cameras have taken me all over America and around the world. I have been very fortunate as a fine art photographer and have exhibited throughout the US and in Japan. My work was featured in Where We Live: Photographs of America from the Bruce Berman Collection at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles in 2007. On display were 10 prints from the Getty's collection of 23 images from 1978 to 1996 in their permanent collection. There is also a Book of the same title that shows each of the works in the exhibit.

I have been published in Aperture magazine and Architecture Minnesota, where a portfolio of fairground images won an award from the Society of Publication Designers. My work is featured in the photography text book The Wonders of Photography by Dennis Curtin. An interview and my photographs are featured on the German website Two Way Lens. Filmmaker Jerry Broeckert made a video about my work documenting Minnesota County Fairgrounds in 2008 titled Capturing a Disappearing Minnesota.

I have been a frequent conference speaker, including the Society of Photographic Education conference in New Orleans, Reinventing the Photographer in Chicago, Second Generation Original - Digital Photography in the 90s, The Electronic Transformation of Text and Image, and the Strictly Business Computer Expo all in Minneapolis, and ImageWorld Orlando.

I have appeared on KUOM and KSTP radio and WCCO and TPT television in the Twin Cites and was recently on KARE 11 Breaking the News discussing documentary photography.

I am currently on the faculty of the University of Minnesota where I teach an online class called Digital Design Strategies for Small Business in the College of Continuing and Applied Studies. I previously taught documentary photography and arts and cultural leadership in the Master of Liberal Studies program and a course on technology in Innovation Studies, in addition to photography in the Art Department, General College and the School of Journalism at the University. My full Teaching Bio is Here.  I live in rural Wisconsin, overlooking the Mississippi River near Red Wing Minnesota with my wife photographer and artist Ann-Marie Rose and a Maine Coon cat. (Yes we like really big cats!)

This site honors over fifty years in photography. Thanks to everyone who supported me and my work this past half-century.

David Husom can be contacted at: david@husomandrose.com

Read his blog at davidhusom.com/pblog - NOTE the Blog was frozen in 2018 and contains no new entries but does show a history of entries.