Interdisciplinary Artist

Stephanie Calabrese has been an artist all her life. A great granddaughter of Armenian and Italian immigrants – her maternal great grandfather and grandmother were artists. A right- and left-brain creative, Stephanie studied and practiced drawing, painting, illustration, photography and creative writing throughout her education and graduated from the University of Georgia with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Interdisciplinary Studies.

At the start of her career in the early 1990s, she found fascination at the intersection of creativity and technology and learned interactive user experience design and development at ADAM Software, a pioneer in digital medical illustration. As a product manager, she helped guide creative and technical teams in the creation of numerous award-winning human anatomy CD-Rom products for consumer and education markets, and supported the company’s IPO in 1995.

At the dawn of the Internet era in 1996, she teamed up with two business partners to form Elemental Interactive, one of the early creative web design and development firms focused on corporate communications. Stephanie lead client engagements with global brand leaders including IBM, The Coca-Cola Company, Compaq, Macromedia (now Adobe), Turner Network Television, and Avaya. By 1999, she participated in the sale of Elemental Interactive to Grey Global Group, one the world’s largest marketing and advertising firms, at the height of the Dot-com era. She continued as a Partner for Elemental Interactive through 2008.

By 2009, at the successful conclusion of an early Web2 community-based 365-Day Photography Project hosted in Flickr, Stephanie left Elemental Interactive to pursue her passion for photography with a focus on documentary storytelling. At that time, she was a co-founding contributor to Shutter Sisters, one of the most popular online women’s photography communities in the early days of blogging, a precursor to social media. Within months of beginning her freelance photography career, Stephanie and project partner, Jen Lemen, won the grand prize for the “Name Your Dream Assignment” global photography competition sponsored by Microsoft and Lenovo in 2009. The award funded the execution of their dream assignment, “Picture Hope”, where they shined a light on inspirational stories from genocide survivors and entrepreneurs in Rwanda, and resourceful educators and modern-day heroes in Tanzania and Nepal. In tandem with that 1.5-year assignment, Stephanie co-authored the book, “Expressive Photography: A Shutter Sisters’ Guide to Shooting from the Heart” published in 2010 by Focal Press in the US and Canada, Ilex Press in the UK, and in many other countries throughout the world. These projects were life-changing, and charted the next course of her career.

By 2010, Stephanie was among early leaders in the iPhoneography movement. Again, at the intersection of creativity and technology, she was fascinated by its creative potential. Using her iPhone as a digital sketchbook, the new medium offered the ability to shoot more frequently, edit in-app more creatively, and share images with viewers instantly. She wrote, “The Art of iPhoneography: A Guide to Mobile Creativity” to help level the playing field for creatives and photo enthusiasts in the exploration of this new medium. The First Edition published in 2011, and the Second Edition in 2012 by Pixiq, an imprint of Sterling Publishing, in the US and Canada, and by Ilex Press in the UK. More than 100,000 copies of the book have been sold all over the world at notable retailers including the Tate Modern in the U.K., the Newseum in Washington, D.C., Urban Outfitters nationwide. The book has been translated into ten languages.

Stephanie has a passion for sharing experiences and insights with others to help inspire their own creativity. She wrote Lens on Life: Documenting Your World Through Photography which includes in-depth stories and images from renowned photographers including Elliott Erwitt, long-time LIFE photographer John Loengard, and collaborative photography project leader and author, Rick Smolen. The book was published in 2012 by Focal Press in the US and Canada, and by Ilex Press in the UK and is available in English, French, Italian and Chinese. That same year, she was a featured speaker at the 2012 BlogHer Annual Conference in New York, NY and at the 2012 and 2013 Annual MacWorld / iWorld conference in San Francisco, CA. She has lead many mobile photography talks and workshops for photography enthusiasts of all ages including children in partnership with Koseli School in Kathmandu, Nepal, and with Atlanta Metro Boys and Girls Clubs in Georgia. Her Atlanta students' images were featured in the New York Times LENS "My Hometown" collaborative documentary photography project for teens nationwide in September 2013.

Following the focus of her documentary work outside of the United States, Stephanie felt a pull to re-examine her own hometown in 2012, the year that marked the end of her marriage. She began serendipitously documenting moments and scenes over the course of three years at home with her iPhone camera. The “Hometown: A Documentary of Monroe, Georgia” in-person exhibit was unveiled to the community at the Monroe Walton Center for the Arts for a two-month exhibition in 2015, and featured online at the New York Times LENS website and in the Atlanta television media by CBS46 News. Accompanying the photographs in the exhibit, Stephanie featured quotes from interviews she conducted with a dozen diverse Monroe residents, revealing a glimpse into the history of the town. This project sparked Stephanie’s curiosity to one-day dig deeper.

On November 20, 2014, Stephanie performed a TEDx Talk "Building a Better World, One Picture at a Time" on TEDx Youth Day, and the keynote speech at the 2014 Annual Exposure Show, Canada's largest photo/video show. Throughout 2014, Stephanie wrote a monthly "Art of iPhoneography" column for Digital Photo Magazine, as well as instructional articles for other publications including Photo.net and iPad/tablet interactive magazine Photographer's i published by Ilex Press.

Since 2009, Stephanie has executed freelance photography, video, and web projects for corporate clients including UPS and The Coca-Cola Company; the State of Georgia Department of Child and Family Services; mid- and small-size businesses spanning a variety of industries including sports media, technology, financial services; and non-profit organizations including CARE International, Ronald McDonald House, Boys & Girls Clubs, and the YWCA. Her professional and personal work has been featured in The New York Times LENS, TIME Lightbox, Forbes.com, LIFE.com, The Times (UK), Digital Photo Magazine, Shutterbug Magazine, Photo.net and the ASMP (American Society of Media Photographers) Bulletin; and exhibited at numerous galleries including: Slow Exposures in Pike County, Georgia; Sixteen Mile Arts Gallery in Ontario; PhotoFest Gallery in Houston; the Atlanta Photography Gallery, Matre Gallery, National Center for Civil and Human Rights Groundbreaking Ceremony at the Georgia Aquarium, "Through the Eyes of a Girl" Exhibit in collaboration with CARE at Mason Murer Fine Art Gallery in Atlanta; and Odapark Art Center in Venlo, Holland. Most recently, Stephanie was awarded first place in the Photo Journalism category for the 10th Annual 2020 Mobile Photo Awards in 2021, in addition to three honorable mentions.

By 2018, three years after the completion of her “Hometown: A Documentary of Monroe, Georgia” photography project, she began initial research and picked up her iPhone camera once again to shoot her first feature-length documentary film, UNSPOKEN. The award-winning film uncovers buried truths about the 1946 Moore’s Ford Lynching and explores how the community has been impacted by generations of racial injustice through the lens of her own whiteness. The film, with an original score (also composed on an iPhone) by Kwame Brandt-Pierce, premiered in August 2022 at the Macon Film Festival (GA) where it won the Audience Choice Award for Documentary Feature. The film won a Special Jury Award at the Rome International Film Festival (GA) and was an official selection for the Morehouse College Human Rights Film Festival (GA), Chagrin Documentary Film Festival (OH), and Portland Film Festival (OR) in 2022. In 2023, the film won Best Documentary at the Reedy Reels Film Festival (SC) and was an official selection at the Cinema on the Bayou Film Festival (LA). Notable higher education institutions have hosted screenings of the film including the University of Georgia, Oxford College of Emory University, and Morehouse College hosted an encore screening of the film in association with their events to honor the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. Following three sold-out screenings of the film in Monroe, Georgia, Stephanie hosted a Community Dialog Inspired by UNSPOKEN and lead by Haley Smith, director of Diversity of Inclusion for Berry College, to help encourage conversation toward racial reconciliation with an aim toward healing.

Stephanie has two children, and serves her community on the Board of Directors for the Walton Boys and Girls Club of North Central Georgia and as a volunteer for the restoration and preservation of Zion Hill Cemetery, the town’s historic Black burial ground. She’s a Web3 enthusiast and enjoys creating and collecting art by diverse artists, long walks, deep talks, new experiences, and quality time with good people.

Classic City Vibes Podcast Interview (October 2023)