Biography

David Rae Morris was born in Oxford, England and grew up in New York City. He had an early interest in photograph and attended night classes at the International Center of Photography. He holds a B.A. from Hampshire College in Amherst, MA, in 1982, and an M.A. In Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of Minnesota in 1991.

His photographs have been published in such diverse publications as Time Magazine, Newsweek, USA Today, and the New York Times, to the Utne Reader, The Nation, and the Angolite, the official Magazine of the Louisiana State Penitentary at Angola, and Love And Rage, a national anarchist weekly. He had also served as a contributing photographer for the Associated Press, Reuters, and Agency France Presse, and the European Pressphoto Agency.

In 1999, Morris collaborated with his late father, the noted author Willie Morris, on My Mississippi, a collection of essays and photographs about the state of Mississippi and her people published by the University Press of Mississippi. His photographs are in many private and public collections including in the permanent collections of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and the Louisiana State Museum in New Orleans, and Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson. His exhibit, “Do You Know What it Means? The Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina,” opened In November 2005, ten weeks after Katrina made landfall.

Morris and his long time partner, Susanne Dietzel, moved to New Orleans since 1994. They have a six year-old daughter, Uma Rae Morris Dietzel. Susanne and Uma recently moved to Athens, Ohio. David Rae will be teaching photography in the journalism department at Ohio University in the spring quarter.