Siblings on polonyna (mountain pasture) above the village by Lida Suchy

Lida Suchy is a first-generation American born into a refugee family. She draws on this background as inspiration for her creative work. For more than 30 years, she has chronicled communities through portraiture. This photograph comes from her ongoing series, Portrait of a Village: The People of Kryvorivnya, Ukraine, which she has documented with her 8 x 10 view camera since 1992. In support of her creative work, Suchy was named a Guggenheim Fellow (2016), New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Fellow (2106), and Fulbright Scholar (2012-14). Among other grants, she received a New York State Council on the Arts/CNY Arts Grant (2008), an ArtsLink Grant (1996), and an International Research & Exchanges Board Fellowship (1988).

Suchy received her MFA from the Yale School of Art in 1992. Her photographs are in public collections including San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, Eastman Museum, Rochester NY, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, and the Ivan Franko Museum, Kryvorivnya, Ukraine. Suchy received the Light Work Grant in Photography in 2010 and 2016 and was a Light Work Artist-in-Residence in 1994.