Stephen received his BA degree from Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois and his MFA degree from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, MA. Currently he teaches and works in the Photography Department as a Visiting Professor of Photography at the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA.

He is the recipient of artist fellowship grants from various organizations including the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, Artadia, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the MacDowell Colony and the Banff Centre for the Arts. He was a finalist for the 2010 Institute of Contemporary Art’s Foster Prize in Boston, MA.

His work is held in many public and private collections, includingThe Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, Illinois; The Princeton Art Museum, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ; The Santa Barbara Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Barbara, CA; Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; The Nelson Atkins Museum, Kansas City, MO; Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery.

Stephen’s work has been exhibited in many museum and gallery venues including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL, The Inside Out Museum in Beijing, China, and The Datz Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea

His work has been published in many journals, including the New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, Esquire Magazine (Russian Edition,) The Atlantic Monthly, Politico, The Daily Mail, Arhitext Design Journal, and Blindspot.