Monthly Meetings
Staci Schwartz
November 3, 2005

Staci Schwartz is the Photo Editor for The Village Voice. As a photographer she has been shooting various New York social events featuring parties, personalities and pop culture for the past 10 years. From Manhattan to Montauk, she has photographed New York City nightlife, suburban rituals on Long Island, and ceremonies of the affluent in the Hamptons. A former student of Larry Fink and Stephen Shore, she is a photographer who tells a story about a microcosm of modern culture with her own definitive style of humor and satire.

"My first real job out of college was working as a Photo Editor for Suffolk Life Newspapers, a chain of 11 free weekly community newspapers in eastern Long Island," said Schwartz. "This job sparked my simultaneous love for editing and shooting: the rush of being on deadline and the fulfillment of photographing assignments while continuing my personal work. . . . I try to apply my editing techniques to my own way of shooting and vice versa. Each way of seeing, whether through the eyes of an editor or the eyes of a photographer, feeds into the other in a complementary way."

As the Photo Editor for The Village Voice for the past five years, Staci has been influential in the interpretation and perception of major world events through photography. These events include the World Trade center attacks on 9/11, the 2004 Republican National Convention in NYC, the war against Afghanistan and Iraq, and the 2004 Presidential election.

Staci's personal work was recently featured in the Photo Editors Who Shoot exhibition, located at the San Bernardino University Museum. Her work was exhibited along with such distinguished colleagues as Kathy Ryan, Photo Editor for The New York Times Magazine, and George Pitts, Director of Photography at Life Magazine. The concurrent role of photographer and Photo Editor has led Staci to lecture at the School of Visual Arts and Empire State College. She has also been a portfolio consultant for the International Center of Photography and featured in Photo District News and American Photo Magazine.

In the spring of 2006, Staci will have a solo exhibition of her documentary project "Long Island Proms," at the San Bernardino University Museum. Her photos can be seen regularly in The Village Voice and at Stacipop.com.