STEPHEN DIRADO

Private/Personal, 1983-2023

Friday, February 2 - Sunday, March 31, 2024

Stephen DiRado is a documentary photographer, filmmaker, and educator born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1957. Influenced by his father, a graphic artist by trade, DiRado pursued the arts, teaching himself photography and beginning a journalism career at age sixteen. In 1981 he earned a B.F.A. from Massachusetts College of Art, and in 1982 joined the faculty at Clark University where he currently serves as professor in the Visual and Performing Arts Department.

A master technician of the large-format view camera, DiRado has spent his career documenting the people in his community, capturing both the intimacy of individuals and the dynamics within group interactions. He has recorded the people of numerous locales, notably Bell Pond and The Worcester Galleria in Worcester, Massachusetts, as well as a decades-long project documenting the beaches and people of Martha’s Vineyard, capturing intimate, soulful moments of island life.

DiRado has also followed and recorded the lives of his friends and fellow artists, including John O’Reilly and Jim Tellin, and Jacob Knight. Beginning in the late 1980s, DiRado documented his father's struggle with Alzheimer's, resulting in the poignant project, With Dad. An eponymous film directed by Soren Sorensen was released in 2021, garnering seven national awards including Best Documentary Short at the New York City Independent Film Festival and the Massachusetts Film Festival, and the Golden Remi Award for Documentary Short Subject in the Houston international Film Festival. With Dad aired on Public Broadcasting Stations in the fall of 2021, including WGBH Boston.

Stephen DiRado has received numerous grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, The National Endowment for the Arts, and is a 2012 John Simon Guggenheim Fellow. His photographs are held in numerous collections including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, New York, the Harry Ransom Research Center, Austin, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Currier Museum, Manchester, New Hampshire, the Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg, Massachusetts, and the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts, among others. His work has also been featured and reviewed nationally in publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Vice Magazine, National Geographic, National Public Radio, and most recently, The New Yorker.

This exhibition brings together photographs from various bodies of work from DiRado’s 40-plus year career, including Bell Pond, Mall Series, Beach, JUMP, Classroom Series, and his Celestial series.

Installation view