BIO

Mark Voss was born in Memphis, Tennessee and grew up in Arizona where he spent many hours shooting pictures with his father and processing them together in their darkroom. In high school he was the photo editor of his school's news magazine, and in college he worked as a photo assistant for Art Streiber in W Magazine’s Milan bureau.

After college Mark worked in New York in public relations where he maintained photography as a hobby.

In addition to photography, Mark's other abiding interest has been the study of different histories and cultures. In the late 1990s, he became fascinated with the Middle East, and in 2003 he returned to Tucson to begin graduate study at the University of Arizona's Department of Near Eastern Studies.

Mark studied Arabic at the American University in Cairo in the summer of 2003, and there his passion for photography found new direction as he became immersed in Egyptian culture, capturing its richness through the lens. He returned to Cairo for additional Arabic study at AUC in the summers of 2004 and 2005 as a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) scholar.

In 2007 Mark earned his MA in Near Eastern Studies at the U of A where he is currently a PhD candidate in NES pursuing a minor in History.

In addition to his academic work, Mark has studied advanced photojournalism with Kim Newton at the University of Arizona and documentary photography with Guy Calaf at the 2010 Foundry Photojournalism Workshop in Istanbul.

Mark is dedicated to documenting the political, economic and social dynamics at play between people, communities and governments in the Middle East and North Africa. Through his photography he strives to enhance understanding of a region that is often misundertood.

His work has appeared in JPEG Magazine, El Imparcial, on Linktv.org and on the companion website to the book Encounters in the Middle East by Nesreen Khashan and Jim Bowman, eds. The University of Arizona's Center for Middle Eastern Studies keeps selections of Mark's photography in their permanent collection, and the center has regularly included his work in their annual photo exhibitions over the past six years.

Mark volunteers as a photographer for Coptic Orphans in Egypt and for the Tucson office of the International Rescue Committee.

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Affiliations:

National Press Photographers Association

Overseas Press Club of America

Professional Photographers of America

Middle East Studies Association

Languages: Arabic, Italian, French and Turkish.