University. Stanford University also recently purchased several prints to display on campus, along with several private art collectors. She does all of this while working around the clock at her most demanding and rewarding job yet – being a mother to her two young daughters, ages 9 and 6 at the time of writing. While her daughters are more interested in becoming astronauts or the next president of the United States, Caren is proud of having raised them in a creative, photography-focused home environment.
didn’t take pictures just for the heck of it because it was a 35-millimeter roll of film that cost money to develop and print. But my girls don’t have that obsitcle now, and they’re always taking pictures. And though it’s so normalized for them, I do try to always talk to them about composition and lighting when I see them take my cameras. Of course, I let them have fun and run with it. Naturally, I don’t want to art direct everything they’re doing, but when they’re really trying to set up a good picture, I’m over their shoulder talking to them about the framing and the four corners of
the image guiding them through it.”
Caren’s daughters have been around camera equipment quite literally since they were born. For a lot of us, that would be limited to our iPhones, but for them that includes light kits, diffusers, umbrellas, tripods, diffusion flags and everything that comes with a fully stocked photo studio. For them, none of this is out of the ordinary or alien. They’re simply tools their mom uses to do her job and to do it well. “The camera is not a barrier for them like it was for me when I was growing up,” Caren said. “Back then, you
This, in turn, has built a level of confidence in her girls that Caren is also extremely proud of and hopes sticks with them as they grow up. And who knows? Maybe one day when they’re done being astronauts and presidents they’ll come back to what they know – art. Learn more at CarenAlpert.com. You can also see her fine art featured in National Geographic's coffee table book, "Invisible Wonders: Photographs of the Hidden World."
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