Education

M.F.A., University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA
B.A., Northeastern State University, Tahlequah, OK

Specialty

Photography

Courses

Biographical Statement

Over his nearly 50 year career Ron Tarver has produced photo essays on subjects ranging from double-Dutch jump rope to the crack-cocaine epidemic of the 1980s. His exhibitions have explored Black architectural legacy, the experiences of Black veterans and Black cowboys. His most recent project appropriates images his father made in the 1940s and ’50s to comment on the current racial climate. His broad range of works shows his love for the medium relating to the community at large and the deeply personal.

Tarver received a BA from Northeastern State University in Oklahoma and an MFA from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Tarver is the recipient of a John S. Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. He has also received two Independence Foundation Fellowships, a Pennsylvania Council on the Art Grant and funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. Before joining the faculty at Swarthmore, he had been a staff photojournalist at the Philadelphia Inquirer for thirty-two years, where he shared the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for his work on a series documenting school violence in the Philadelphia public school system. During his time at the Inquirer he was nominated for three Pulitzers and honored with awards from World Press Photos, the Sigma Delta Chi Award of the Society of Professional Journalists, the National Press Photographers Association / University of Missouri Pictures of the Year, as well as other national, state, and local honors.

In addition to his newspaper publications, Tarver’s work has appeared in National Geographic, Life, Time, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, Ebony, Jet, Black & White, Huffington Post, and Hyperallergic. He is a co-author of the book We Were There: Voices of African American Veterans (Harper Collins, 2004), which accompanied a traveling exhibition that debuted at the National Constitution Center, Philadelphia. His second book The Long Ride Home: Black Cowboys in America debuted as the number one release on Amazon in 2024 and later garnered several awards. It is accompanied by a traveling national exhibition.

Tarver’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in over thirty solo and fifty group exhibitions. It is included in many private, corporate, and museum collections, including Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; Philadelphia Museum of Art; The Studio Museum in Harlem; the State Museum of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg and many other corporate and private collections. His work is represented by the Robin Rice Gallery in New York.