Paul D'Amato (American, 1956- ) was born in Boston where he attended Boston Latin School at the height of racial unrest, civil rights, and bussing. He moved to Oregon to attend Reed College and claims to have learned as much from traveling cross-country four times a year -often by hitch-hiking and hopping freight- as he did in class. After receiving an MFA from Yale he moved to Chicago where he discovered the communities of Pilsen and Little Village. The pictures and writing D'Amato producded there over the next fourteen years -despite having had to move to Maine to teach- eventually were made into the book, Barrio (University of Chicago Press, 2006). Paul moved back to Chicago in 2001 to teach at Columbia College and is currently photographing in the black community on the near west side for a project tentatively called "Please be Free Now." He has been awarded numerous grants and fellowships including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pollock-Krasner Grant, and a Rockefeller Foundation Grant to Bellagio, Italy. www.pauldamato.com