Deborah Gray Mitchell

 

     Photographer Deborah Gray Mitchell began a 40-year career in photography

in 1981 as a fine art photographer and worked her way into the commercial arena where she photographed a myriad of

subjects over the years: live performance, lawyers, doctors, politicians, food, sports turf, corporate portraits and the works

of many fine artists. The profession has taken her into areas she never even dreamed of, and the challenges were many.

 

She has now retired from the commercial world and is re-examining the images she's created for herself over the years.

Goals include exhibits, lectures and the creation of books from the various bodies of work. She's also looking for

homes for the boxes full of prints she's archived. She's working toward putting these images on this site with a shopping cart for purchases.

 

Deborah's personal Images have been shot in far away places ... India, China, Myanmar ...and in places closer to home with her

many images from the American South, other parts of the Americas and Europe.  Collections include "The Sirens of Beguile,"

a study of light and glass created at sunrise during the Equinox of several springs during the last decade, "The Swimmer Series,"

works created in swimming pools, and "Sweeter Than a Watermelon Dream," black and white studies of the Southern people and traditions.

Deborah's photographs have been widely exhibited, received many awards, and her prints are included in numerous private and public collections.

 

Primarily a self-taught photograher , Deborah was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1950

and attended public schools and Memphis State University, at none of which did she study photography.

After a few years in the hospitality industry, she found her way to Miami in 1979, and managed to turn herself into a photographer

(with a lot of help from her friends). In the film days, Deborah shot formats from 35mm to 8x10. Her “How-To” videos of darkroom instruction

have been viewed thousands of times on YouTube,

She is the first woman to have served as president (1992-1994) of the South Florida chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP),

and in 1994 chaired the National ASMP Chapter President’s Meeting. She was also a member of the Board of Directors

of Photogroup, a fine arts organization in Miami, where she was the featured artist for the last exhibition the organization held before it closed.