Alex Webb became interested in photography during his high school years and attended the Apeiron Workshops in Millerton, New York, in 1972. He majored in history and literature at Harvard University, studying photography at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts. In 1974 he began working as a professional photojournalist and his photographs started to appear in such publications as The New York Times Magazine, Life, Geo, Stern, and National Geographic. Webb joined Magnum Photos as an associate member in 1976.
During the mid-1970s, Webb photographed in the American south, documenting small town life in black-and-white. He also began working in the Caribbean and Mexico. In 1978 he started to photograph in color, which he has continued to do. He has published five photography books, including Hot Light/Half-Made Worlds: Photographs from the Tropics, Under A Grudging Sun, and Crossings, as well as the limited edition artist book Dislocations. His new book, Istanbul: City of a Hundred Names will be published in the spring of 2007.
Webb received a New York Foundation of the Arts Grant in 1986, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1990, and a Hasselblad Foundation Grant in 1998. He won the Leopold Godowsky Color Photography Award in 1988, the Leica Medal of Excellence in 2000, and the David Octavius Hill award in 2002. His photographs have been the subject of articles in Art in America and Modern Photography. He has exhibited widely in the United States and Europe, in museums including the Walker Art Center, the Museum of Photographic Arts, the International Center of Photography, the High Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
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