CFEVA ART PARTY 2026

HONORING RON TARVER

We are honored to celebrate Ron Tarver, an acclaimed photographer, educator, and visual storyteller whose career has shaped the landscape of American photojournalism and fine art photography.

Born in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, Tarver earned his BA in Journalism and Graphic Arts from Northeastern State University in Oklahoma and his MFA from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. He currently serves as an Associate Professor of Art at Swarthmore College.

Tarver began his career as the first Black photographer at the Muskogee Phoenix and later worked for the Springfield News-Leader before joining The Philadelphia Inquirer, where he spent 32 years. His work at the Inquirer earned national recognition, including sharing the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for a series on school violence in Philadelphia. Throughout his career, he received numerous honors from World Press Photo, the Society of Professional Journalists, the National Press Photographers Association, and many regional and national organizations.

His photography has appeared in National Geographic, Life, Time, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, Ebony, Jet, Black and White Magazine, Huffington Post, and Hyperallergic. He is co-author of We Were There: Voices of African American Veterans (HarperCollins, 2004), which accompanied a national traveling exhibition. His most recent book, The Long Ride Home: Black Cowboys in America, was released in August 2024.

As a fine artist, Tarver has been recognized with prestigious awards including Guggenheim and Pew Fellowships, as well as support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the Independence Foundation. He also serves on the advisory council of the TILT Institute for the Contemporary Image.

Tarver’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in more than 30 solo and 50 group exhibitions. His photographs are held in major museum and private collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, the State Museum of Pennsylvania, and the Oklahoma History Center. He is represented by the Robin Rice Gallery in New York and Grand Image in Seattle.