ALAN THOMAS is a publisher and photographer in Chicago.  He was raised in Germany, Yugoslavia, and Virginia, and received his B.A. from Princeton University, where he studied photography with Emmet Gowin and Frederick Sommer. He also holds an M.Phil. from Oxford University.

Thomas is Editorial Director at the University of Chicago Press. He has published many books related to photography and visual studies, including criticism by Susan Stewart, Michael Fried, Susie Linfield, Walter Benn Michaels, and W. J. T. Mitchell, as well as books by the photographers James Welling, Ashley Gilbertson, Susan Meiselas, Alan Cohen, and Jed Fielding. For more information, visit his University of Chicago Press page.

As a photographer, Thomas has work in the Museum of Contemporary Photography’s Midwest Photographer’s Project and  Catherine Edelman Gallery’s Chicago Project. In 2012, his one-person show at the Seagull Foundation for the Arts, Calcutta, surveyed photographs made over two decades in Chicago, Tokyo, and Calcutta. He has also exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Catherine Edelman Gallery, and the Illinois State Museum in Chicago; the Flak Photo Midwest Print Show in Madison, WI; Photo Works Gallery in Glen Echo, MD; and other venues. Thomas is a regular contributor to the online journals Design Observer and Places, which published his photographic series Chicago Self-Park (2010), Open Secrets: Photographs of Japan (2010), The Blue Corvette (2011), Approaching Calcutta (2013), Signs, Signs (on the January 2017 Women's March in Chicago), and 55x5. His recent writings include essays on Lee Friedlander's mirrors, Terry Evans's Heartland, Laura McPhee's Calcutta, and on editing Norman Maclean's Young Men and Fire.

Thomas's book, 55x5 (with an introduction by Kathryn Lofton), is published by Marquand Editions and available from the Seminary Coop Bookstore (US and international orders) or from the Marquand Editions storefronts at Paper Hammer and Amazon.com (US orders only).

For work in progress and miscellanea, visit Alan Thomas on Instagram: agthomas81