Sedat Pakay was born in Turkey in 1945. He went on to Yale where he studied art with Walker Evans, Paul Rand and Herbert Matter and received his Masters in Fine Arts in 1968. Pakay went on to become a photojournalist for various magazines including Holiday, Esquire, and New York. He also became a documentary filmmaker with films about Walker Evans, James Baldwin and Josef Albers - all three being highly acclaimed and shown on PBS. Pakay’s photographs of people and places have been shown at the Museum of Turkish-Islamic Arts in Istanbul (1995), Tremaine Gallery (1999), University of Wisconsin (2002), Museum of Photography in Balikesir, Turkey (2003), and the Istanbul Modern Art Museum (2005). His photographs are in international private and museum collections including those of The Museum of Modern Art, Smithsonian, Museum of Turkish-Islamic Arts, Getty Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin, Istanbul Modern Art Museum and Lehigh University. Pakay lives with his wife in Columbia County, NY where he also has his studio.
Roman Iwasiwka was born in Argentina in 1957 and moved with his family to Manhattan’s East Village in 1960. He grew up in this neighborhood of the Fillmore East, hippies, Electric Circus, artists and more. Coming from a family of performing artists, Iwasiwka felt comfortable in this environment. He majored in communications at City University and took on internships that expanded his interests in music, photography and acting. Eventually, he became CBS’ senior photo editor and in-house photographer. Some of his assignments included the Winter Olympics, Grammy Awards, Live Aid, and NFL games. Because of his background and experiences, Iwasiwka was most comfortable around performance artists and some of his best photographs of these musical legends from the 1980s up to today are of Bob Dylan, U2, Eric Clapton, Joni Mitchell, Peter Gabriel, Led Zeppelin, Elvis Costello, Tom Petty, Neil Young, Cyndi Lauper, etc. Iwasiwka’s work has appeared in Newsweek, People, Money, TV Guide, CBS, HBO, Berkshire Living, etc. Roman Iwasiwka continues to take photographs and play his guitar. He lives in the Berkshires with his family.