ALAN TELLER’s academic training is in anthropology and photography. Alan founded the Inner-City Photo Workshop, a Chicago center for disadvantaged youth. He was photographic researcher for the Field Museum of Natural History, where he also taught classes on photography and anthropology. He founded Teller Madsen, a museum exhibit design company that has developed over 100 exhibits nationwide, including the permanent exhibits for the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, Vivian Maier’s Chicago and many others. Alan has received numerous grants for arts and social issues programs, has published some 20 reviews and articles as well as the guidebook ‘Photography in the Classroom.’ With Jerri Zbiral, he co-produced the award winning documentary film “In the Shadow of Memory: The Legacy of Lidice.” He was also the founding Executive Director of the Adlai Stevenson Center on Democracy. Alan has taught photography at Columbia College, Purdue University and the School of the Art Institute. At Lake Forest College, he taught in both the History and Art departments, offering courses on photography and anthropology, public history, and on museums and exhibits. Alan has exhibited his own photography since the 1970s.

JERRI ZBIRAL was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia. She received a Master of Fine Arts degree in photography from the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York. Jerri became the Director of Chicago’s Inner-City Photo Workshop, then went on to found and direct community photography programs for the Public Art Workshop and the Community Arts Center of the Uptown Hull House in Chicago. There, she worked as arts administrator, teacher, and director of a special photography program for the hearing impaired. With Alan Teller, she is a partner in The Collected Image, exhibiting vintage and contemporary photography. She is a prominent appraiser of photographic collections and has worked with most of the major American institutions with photographic holdings. Jerri has received numerous grants for her own photography and to fund community programs. She has directed and produced the award winning and internationally screened documentary films ‘Never Turning Back, The World of Peggy Lipschutz’ and with Alan Teller, ‘In the Shadow of Memory: The Legacy of Lidice’ and ‘Following the Box’ based on their Fulbright project. She and Alan are based in Evanston, Illinois.