Biography

Charles H. Traub was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1945. He studied at the University of Illinois and joined the Peace Corps after graduation but due to an accident was forced to return home where he met Ralph Eugene Meatyard, who became an important inspiration. Following a stint in the Army, he decided to pursue photography at the Institute of Design in Chicago. In 1976 he began his first major body of color work, Lunchtime, which he continued after moving to New York City in 1978. Traub is co-founder of ‘here is new york: a democracy of photographs’, which received the Brendan Gill Award and the ICP Cornell Capa Infinity Award. Throughout his career, Traub has dedicated himself to photographic education. From 1971 to 1978, he was instrumental in the founding of the photography department at Columbia College in Chicago, and organized the school’s Museum of Contemporary Photography. While working on numerous bodies of work such as- Dolce Via, Indecent Exposure, New York On The Edge, he was a freelance editorial photographer for the partnership Wayfarer, and was published in major magazines. From 1987 to the present, Charles has been the chair of the department of Photography, Video and Related Media at the School of Visual Arts, New York. Traub has authored diverse monographs and books on photography.

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