Dale Rio

I am a photographic artist whose work explores issues such as mortality, the passage of time, and humanity’s relationship with the natural world. Utilizing film and historic photographic processes, I employ “straight” photography to document the world around me, and I also create conceptual work in response to that world. My photographs have been shown extensively in the U.S., as well as in England, Germany, and New Zealand.  They reside in private collections and have been reproduced in countless publications.
 
I received a BA in Studio Art from Smith College in 1993 and an MFA in Photography from Pratt Institute in 1996. In 1997, I was awarded a Fulbright Travel Grant and the Miguel Vinciguerra Grant to document life in rural Sicily. Upon my return to the States, I embarked upon a varied photographic career that has included freelancing, serving as a master darkroom printer, teaching, curating, and editing.  
 
In 2018, I received a Windgate Scholarship, which allowed my to study the Daguerreotype process at Penland School of Craft. I have attended residencies at Penland, the Studios at MASS MoCA, the Farmington Valley Arts Center (Connecticut), and Ars BioArctica at the Kilpisjärvi Biological Station in Finland.
 
I have been involved with numerous photo and art centers across the country, and in 2015, I co-founded The Halide Project, a Philadelphia-based non-profit whose mission is the support of alternative and historic process photography.  In 2021, I launched Point A to Point B: analog explorations, a print publication that features travel- and place-based analog photographic work, and in 2022 I founded Lux et Libera, an initiative that seeks to recognize the leading role women play in alternative process photography and create new opportunities for them.