News

First woman, African-American Director of White House photography to appear at UA-PTC

Veteran photojournalist Sharon Farmer, the first woman and first African-American to be appointed Director of White House Photography, will discuss her four decade-plus career Thursday, March 15 at 6 p.m. at UA – Pulaski Tech’s Center for Humanities and Arts on the UA-PTC Main Campus, 3000 W. Scenic Drive in North Little Rock. The discussion will be moderated by noted author and publisher, Janis F. Kearney. The event is co-sponsored by the Clinton Presidential Center and the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center.

Farmer has been a professional photojournalist and exhibition photographer for more than 40 years, shooting news stories, political campaigns, cultural events, conferences, and portraits. She has photographed for The Washington Post, the Smithsonian Institution, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the National Urban League, the Brookings Institution, and many others. Farmer served as Director of the White House Photography Office from 1999-2001. A White House photographer since 1993, she documented the Clinton-Gore Administration at its beginning.

Farmer has taught and lectured extensively on photography and photojournalism at the National Archives, American University, the Smithsonian Institution, Mount Vernon College, the National Geographic Society, Eddie Adams Workshop, the Women in Photojournalism Conference, Western Kentucky University, Indiana University; Louisville, Kentucky’s Frazier Museum, University of Miami, the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), and the History Makers education series.

Her photographic work resides in the collections of the Clinton Presidential Library, the National Archives, the Library of Congress, Howard University’s Moreland-Spingarn Collection, the District of Columbia Government; the Anacostia Museum and the National Museum of African American History and Culture of the Smithsonian Institution; the King Arts Complex in Columbus, Ohio, The South African Museum in Pretoria and in private collections.

Moderator Janis F. Kearney is the publisher of Writing Our World Publishing, a 15 year-old independently owned company specializing illuminating southern stories through diverse genres such as memoir, biography, fiction, and historical nonfiction. She is a former publisher and managing editor of the Arkansas State Press and served as presidential diarist to Bill Clinton from 1995 to 2001.