internship at Interview magazine in New York City, which was founded by Andy Warhol, while also working at the International Center for Photography (ICP). After graduating and before launching her own photography business, she worked in New York City at Conde Nast as a photography researcher for Vogue and at Miramax in the still photography department. She then moved on to Time, Inc. where she was the photo editor at Money magazine and Parenting magazine and then promoted to director of photography at Health magazine in San Francisco where she ultimately settled down. The first half of her career was spent either assigning projects to other photographers, completing research and supporting how photographic narratives were told in magazines. The turning point in her career, however, was when she hired a photographer while at Health magazine who missed the mark on an assignment, resulting in her having to take the photos herself. “We were in a bind,” Caren explained. “We received the film on a Friday afternoon, and the deadline was the following Monday. So, I decided to shoot it myself over the weekend. That was when I realized that I could be the photographer and not just the person assigning other photographers.” Despite admitting she never took a photo of food during her time at the University of Arizona, nowadays Caren balances her professional hours between photoshoots for magazine editorials, cookbooks, international publications, advertising campaigns, packaging and branded content while also working for Apple under its worldwide marketing communications and business affairs umbrella, which leans on her experience as a photo editor. In addition to her commercial food photography, Caren has also embarked on a more atypical way of showcasing food her photography. “Terra Cibus is a fine art project I actually started shooting in 2009 at the University of Arizona where I photographed food up close with a scanning electron microscope,” Caren explained. “It’s a combination of where my interest in science and technology intersects with food. It has been extremely rewarding and started out more of a personal project for me more than anything commercial. But [over time it] has led to solo shows in the U.S. and internationally, as well as a full-page article in the Wall Street Journal. And that was humbling because the Wall Street Journal rarely publishes inside pages in color. Sometimes the cover of the newspaper is in color and the cover of their sections, but rarely are inside pages in color. They devoted around three-quarters of a whole page in color to my fine art photography. I was honored.” Caren initiated this project at the University of Arizona because it gave her access to a scanning electron microscope, and since then she has gone on to shoot more of these molecular food photos at Harvard
CAREN ALPERT (Beta Epsilon-Arizona) Fine Art and Food Photographer
Caren Alpert (Beta Epsilon-Arizona) has an interesting perspective on food in her professional world. She’s not the one who develops the recipes and prepares the food or even gets to taste the food most of the time. Instead, her skills are needed behind the lens of a camera. She is an internantionally published fine art and food photographer. Caren earned a fine arts degree in photography with a minor in graphic design from the University of Arizona, but recognized early on that she would need to carve out opportunities for herself to expand her horizons beyond Tucson and achieve her dreams. During her senior year at the University of Arizona, Caren completed an
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