Cherie Hiser Bio

During the last four decades, Cherie Hiser has become widely respected as an innovator and visioneer in the field of photography. She is internationally recognized as a photographer, educator, curator, consultant, writer and net worker. Her own art education began by attending programs at the Portland Art Museum after completion of a university degree in Clinical Psychology. Her first teachers were Minor White, Ruth Bernhard and Imogen Cunningham.
Cherie became impassioned with the medium, and in 1968 founded “The Center of the Eye” in Aspen, which at the time, was quoted to be “the most influential photography workshop in the world.” Encouraged by Ansel Adams, she was the first director of the photography program and gallery at the Sun Valley Center for the Arts and Humanities in 1974. In Santa Fe, New Mexico she founded the “Center of the Eye Collaborative Workshops and Gallery”, followed twenty years later in Portland in 1996 with “PhotoWorks NorthWest”, another innovative non- profit photography program. Cherie’s work has been exhibited and published widely from small presses to National Geographic magazine. Her prints are in numerous public and private collections She has received many honors including a residency at the Visual Studies Workshop in New York; a grant from the Polaroid Foundation to work with hospitalized mental patients and photography. In 1998 she was elected one of twelve artists in the United States for the National Photographer/Humanitarian of the Year award. She is a founding Board member of Photolucida and a member of the Photo Council of the Portland Art Museum, and was a trustee of Ansel Adams’ Friends of Photography organization for 5 years. Cherie is sought after as a curator and juror of exhibitions. The professional relationships and friendships she maintains today are long standing and influential. Jeanne Adams has been an important mentor and muse; Lee Friedlander calls her a “Photo evangelist” and Cornell Capa states: “She is one of the most vital persons of our time”. Paul Magnusson, PhD., former president of Oregon College of Arts and Crafts writes: “…she has given a generation of photographers the chance to explore the evolution of their work…she is the quintessential teacher.” As a reviewer, Cherie is especially interested in “edgy” work which takes risks and which comments on societal concerns, secrets and restrictions although she enjoys looking at all types of work.