Dave Jordano was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1948. He received a BFA in photography from the College for Creative Studies in 1974. In 1977 he established a successful commercial photography studio in Chicago, IL, shooting major print campaigns for national advertising agencies.

As a mid-career fine art photographer, he was awarded an honorable mention in the Houston Center for Photography’s Long Term Fellowship Project in 2003, and received the Curator’s Choice Award the following year. In 2006, 2008, and 2013 he was a three time top twenty finalist in Photolucida’s “Critical Mass” national photographic book award in Portland, Oregon.

In 2012 and 2014 he was a finalist in LensCultures International Exposure Awards. He was also selected for inclusion in “One Hundred Portfolios”, a compilation featuring the work of 100 leading photographers from around the world and sponsored by Wright State University, Dayton, OH. A major exhibition of his work from his “Articles of Faith” project was held at the Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, Illinois in 2009.

In 2015 Jordano won the prestigious $50,000 Canadian AIMIA AGO Photography Prize and became a finalist in the 2016 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition Award, exhibited at National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC.

Jordano has had solo shows both nationally and internationally and his work is included in the permanent collection of several private, corporate, and museum institutions, most notably the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL, The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, The Detroit Institute of Arts, The Detroit Historical Museum, The Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, the Harris Bank Collection, and the Federal Reserve Bank.

His previous book, published by the Center for American Places at Columbia College, Chicago titled, “Articles of Faith, Small African-American Community Churches of Chicago”, was released in April 2009.
His recent project titled, “Detroit: Unbroken Down” documents the cultural and societal changes of his hometown of Detroit and was published by PowerHouse Books in the fall of 2015. Dave Jordano currently lives in Chicago, Illinois.