Draft:Paul D'Amato (photographer)

Paul D'Amato (born 1956) is a American photographer and author based in Chicago. His work has focused on the depiction of urban environments, and he is represented by Stephen Daiter Gallery.

He lives in Chicago, Illinois. He is specialized in portrait photography and documentary photography and he is a professor at Columbia College Chicago. By 2006, D'Amato was "the winner of a Guggenheim fellowship".

He one of the founders and editors of SKYLARK EDITIONS, a non-profit publishing project based in Chicago.

Early life, education, and career
Born in Boston, Massachusetts, D'Amato He received an M.F.A. from the Yale School of Art in 1985. In 1989, D'Amato taught a senior photography class for the Portland School of Art. In 1990 he premiered an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

A 1996 review of a four-artist exhibition in Brunswick featuring D'Amato praised his "ability to document without surrendering his aesthetic insights".

In 2006, he published Barrio: Photographs From Chicago's Pilsen and Little Village, which was reviewed by the Chicago Tribune. The book focused on "visits to the primarily Mexican neighborhoods of Pilsen and Little Village from 1988 to 2002", and the Tribune noted that D'Amato avoided falling into urban or ghetto clichés "by showing new variations", and that D'Amato described a "near-addiction to photographing a particular street gang", until he was dissuaded by the prospect of "witnessing planned, violent crimes".

He published the books Here/Still/Now with Kehrer Verlag and We Shall with DePaul Art Museum.

Recognition
He received many grants and awards, like The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation Grant in 2013, the Book Prize: Traditional Prize Winner, by Lucie Foundation, in Los Angeles, in 2018; the Best Photography Books of the Year, by PDN Photo Annual, in New York, in 2018. He was finalist for the Portrait Competition, by Lensculture, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, in 2018

His photographs are part of many important public collections, like that of the Art Institute of Chicago, in Chicago, Illinois, and the DePaul University Art Museum, also in Chicago, the Federal Reserve Bank in Chicago, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, New York, New York, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York. .

He has some media coverage in many magazines and newspapers, such as the Chicago Tribune.