About Stephen

ABOUT STEPHEN GORMAN

“For more than two decades, American photographer Stephen Gorman has traveled with Inuit companions across the North American Arctic to document the environment and culture at the top of the world. These images highlight the importance of maintaining Inuit traditions and the Inuit connection to Nature while adapting to cultural and environmental change.”

- United States Department of State.

Stephen Gorman is an internationally recognized photographer and best-selling author. Raised overseas, educated in a foreign language and culture, Stephen has a unique perspective on modern industrial society’s separation from nature; the harmful social and environmental consequences of that dualistic relationship; and the many alternative ways of living sustainably as still exemplified by thousands of indigenous and other place-based cultures around the world.

Stephen holds a master’s degree in environmental studies from Yale University, where he concentrated on cultural ecology and came to understand how history, culture, energy, and materials are the key determinants in human affairs. In particular his studies focused on the mythology of the American Frontier, and how it shapes the American worldview to this day. In his academic quest for knowledge and understanding he benefitted greatly from the guidance and mentorship of intellectual giants including Vine Deloria, Jr., Richard Slotkin, William Cronon, and Stephen Kellert.

Using the power of his words and visual images to investigate the way we think about nature and culture, he sets off into the outback for days, weeks and sometimes even months at a time in search of compelling stories and striking images of the natural world and the men and women who live and work upon the land. To portray the spirit of these special and endangered wildlife populations, landscapes, and traditional cultures, Stephen uses his sharply honed photography, writing, interpersonal, and wilderness survival skills, journeying deep into remote regions, returning from each expedition with stories and photographs that can only be crafted by spending time in our planet’s last truly wild and historic landscapes.

From 2006 to 2011 Stephen was Artist-in-Residence aboard an Inuit operated Arctic expedition vessel. In that position he was invited to explore the farthest reaches of the Canadian and Greenlandic Arctic and to portray the land, wildlife, and people of the Inuit homeland. The photographs for his book, Arctic Visions - Encounters at the Top of the World, which was commissioned by the Inuit of Nunavik, Canada, were created during that residency.

In 2017 Stephen was the only American photographer chosen by the U.S. Department of State to be featured in Eyes on the Arctic - U.S. - Canadian Cooperation in the North. His Arctic photographs in that exhibition celebrating Canada’s 150th anniversary as a nation toured the United States Embassy and U.S. Consulates across Canada.

In 2015, 2016, and 2018 Stephen participated in Visions of the Boreal Forest: Art, Science and Adventure in the Northern Wilderness -- a project of the Center for Circumpolar Studies and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History Arctic Studies Center. Stephen was invited to participate in extended wilderness expeditions to the Alaskan and Canadian arctic and sub-arctic in order to create photographic artworks portraying the critical importance of the boreal forest ecosystem, the largest and most intact terrestrial ecosystem on Earth.

Stephen’s books include The American Wilderness: Journeys into Distant and Historic Landscapes; and Northeastern Wilds: Journeys of Discovery in the Northern Forest. His book Arctic Visions: Encounters at the Top of the World won the Benjamin Franklin Award. His next book, Waiting For Winter — his first illustrated children’s book — will be published by Capstone, the nation’s leading educational publisher of K-5 children’s books and literacy programs for school libraries, classrooms, and at-home reading, in the fall of 2025.

Throughout his career, Stephen has worked on cultural and environmental assignments for leading media such as National Geographic, Discovery Channel, Sports Illustrated, Men’s Journal, Orion, Audubon, and Sierra. Recently, Stephen’s exhibition Down to the Bone, at the Peabody-Essex Museum from 2022-2023, was a collaboration with legendary New Yorker artist Edward Koren in response to the global environmental and climate crisis. Environmental Impact II featured Stephen’s arctic photography at The National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in 2024. HIs latest exhibition, Visions of Inuit Life - Photographs by Stephen Gorman, will be on view at the Museo Del Oro, Bogota, Colombia, from November 28, 2024 to May 19, 2025

Stephen lives in Norwich, Vermont, with his wife Mary.

Monument to Infinite Growth, Kaktovik, Alaska, 2017