About me
John Francis Ficara has traveled the globe as an editorial photographer, photographing domestic and international news events and politics. His assignments have taken him to 84 countries around the world. He has covered the White House for Newsweek Magazine through five presidential campaigns and four administrations and has produced 38 cover images for Newsweek Magazine as well as covers for a variety of domestic and international magazines.
He has won numerous awards and honors including a “DESI” for his Newsweek Magazine cover photograph of Pope John Paul II in the Philippines and in 1992, a National Headliners Award for "Feature Photography" for his Persian Gulf coverage leading up to the war. His photographs have received awards from World Press Photo, the National Press Photographers Association and the White House News Photographers Association. His editorial work has appeared in editions of American Photography, which honors the best in American photography in editorial, advertising and fine art. A selection of his images appear in the book projects Maryland 24/7 and A Day in the Life of the U.S. Armed Forces and Barack Obama : The Official Inaugural Book.
Having completed a four-year photographic project documenting the disappearing black family farmer in America, the body of work was awarded the White House News Photographers Documentary Grant and the National Press Photographers/Nikon Documentary Sabbatical Grant, considered to be the “Fulbright Scholarship of Photography.” The culmination of this project is the critically acclaimed book Black Farmers in America, published by the University Press of Kentucky. In addition, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of African American Culture and History in Baltimore, Maryland curated Distant Echoes: Black Farmers in America, a collection of sixty photographs from the book project, traveling the exhibition nationally.
Mr. Ficara has been a featured speaker on photojournalism and long-term documentary projects at colleges, universities and photographic organizations around the United States.
Mr. Ficara sits on the advisory board for the Institute for Documentary Change, School of Communication at American University in Washington, D. C. and is an advisory board member for the Northern Virginia Community College Department of Photojournalism.
He is a member of the National Press Photographers’ Association and the American Society of Media Photographers. He presently resides in the Washington, D.C. area.
Teaches:
Associate Certificate - DP-102: Introduction to Photojournalism
Associate Certificate - DP-105: Advanced Photojournalism & Professional Portfolio
Study with the Masters/Mentorship - Photojournalism
