biography + cv

Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and  raised there and in Madison, Wisconsin, David Herwaldt studied photography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a series of distinguished photographers, including Minor White, Tod Papageorge, Charles Harbutt, and Nicholas Nixon. Following his graduation in 1979, he endured brief stints as a short order cook and a photo lab manager before working for many years as a freelance photographer and exhibition preparator. In the mid-1990s, Bruce Herman invited  him to teach photography at Gordon College. That invitation soon led to additional teaching opportunities — at Harvard University (where he won an award for teaching excellence), Wellesley College,  the Maine Photography Workshop, and  the New England School of Photography, among others.

In 2004 he began graduate study of graphic design and book arts at the University of Iowa, studying with Ab Gratama, Bradley Dicharry, Kay Amert, Julia Leonard, and Tim Barrett — earning an MA in 2006 and an MFA in 2009. He has published numerous book and exhibition reviews in New Boston Review, Afterimage, Views, and Wilson Library Journal. With Donald Dietz, he curated Through the Eyes of a Teacher, an exhibition and book of photographs by Father James Harold Flye, the mentor and life-long friend of the writer James Agee. For twenty-two years he produced a weekly blues radio show for WMBR, a community radio station in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

At present, he lives in Winona, Minnesota, where, having retired from teaching, he freelances as a photographer and graphic designer and is assembling an exhibition of his photographs of blues musicians.  The show is scheduled to open, pandemic permitting, in November 2020. The project  is supported by a grant from the Southeast Minnesota Arts Council.