Bill Bamberger Jr. (born 1956) is an American documentary photographer, photojournalist, and author who captures social and cultural issues in America and around the world.
[8][9][2] He was a Morehead Scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, graduating in 1979 with a degree in American studies.
[10][11][12] He has been interviewed on various television shows, including CBS Sunday Morning, C-SPAN2's About Books, and North Carolina People on PBS, as well as on All Things Considered on NPR.
[6] Bamberger's first significant project documented a cross-section of people living in Durham County, North Carolina from 1979 to 1982.
[17] The result was a book and an exhibit shown at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Duke University's Brown Gallery in the Bryan Center, the Reece Museum at East Tennessee State University, and the Morris Gallery of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
[23] Another reviewer notes the artistic quality, saying, "The gentle natural light of the factory interior captures workers, products, and machinery in an elegiac yet unsentimental memorial.
This is documentary work of a high order, a corrective to triumphalist cybercratic boosterism, and above all a reminder of the ambiguities and ironies of family values.
[2] He also spent six months in San Antonio, Texas, where he lived in a Mexican-American neighborhood that included houses built by Habitat for Humanity.
[29] Fabricated for $125,000 with the design help of Gregg Snyder of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the mobile art gallery's "purpose is to foster a better understanding of the affordable home-ownership issue.
"[29][28] The gallery traveled from 2002 to 2003, going from San Antonio, Texas, to Oregon to North Dakota, and ending in Chapel Hill.
[10][2] Through a 1999 National Endowment of the Arts' program, "Artists and Community: America Creates for the Millennium", Bamberger was able to revisit Boys Will Be Men.
[31][4][2] At first, the students were reluctant to participate because they were afraid of another Roger & Me, the documentary film by Michael Moore that negatively portrayed their, and his, hometown.
"[4] Principal of Flint Central, Jim Beaublem, said, "The positive spinoff from this exhibit is to break apart stereotypes about an inner-city school.
Instead, my photographs explore how the people of Rwanda are finding their way while faced with contemporary issues like healthcare, education, and housing.
[16][6] One reviewer noted, "By cutting out the players, Bamberger removes the idea of a moment frozen in time, to instead tell the broader story of a place and environment, captured in vivid color.
[37] Bamberger won the Mayflower Prize in Nonfiction for his book Closing: The Life and Death of an American Factory, produced with Cathy N.