About the Photographer
Early in my life, photography became a favorite pastime. Over the decades its grip on my interests and time strengthened to the point that it turned into more than a hobby if less than a career.
My academic career involved international issues requiring foreign trips, particularly in the poorer developing countries. Beyond their professional attraction, such travels fascinated me culturally and visually. They offered eyefuls of people and nature that seemed at once familiar and novel, conventional and puzzling. The desire was irresistible to search for and explore those eyefuls photographically after or between my trips’ scheduled events. In addition to these academic ventures, my vacations, hikes and treks gave occasion for most of the website’s images.
Over a half century, the subject matter of my photography remained markedly diverse. It never concentrated on a particular theme, topic or region. The vast majority of pictures on the website cannot be cabined within a particular ideology or purpose. Nonetheless, certain underlying ideas and beliefs are common to many photos. They suggest a deep relationship between my academic work and much of my photography.
Over the years, the photography predictably migrated from black-and-white to color, and from film to digital. Both trends heightened and broadened my engagement with picture-taking. They indeed transformed my relationship to the entire practice of photography.
A few words about my principal career. The images in the book straddle the four decades during which I taught at Harvard Law School, as well as the years after I became professor emeritus in 2005. Over this period, international human rights became my principal commitment in scholarship, teaching and consulting. Today I continue to explore questions of human rights and pursue public interest projects, while engaging with this brave new world of digital photography.
Dated: March 2023
All images are subject to © 1916-2023, Henry Steiner