Born in Pittsburgh in 1946, Ron Zak served in Vietnam before moving to the West Coast where he documented the social movements of the sixties and seventies. He earned a Master’s in Art from San Francisco State University in 1976 and presented his first solo exhibition titled “The Human Condition” at SFAI’s Walter and McBean Gallery. In 1979, Zak moved to Sonoma and started doing photography for newspapers and magazines. His teaching career began in 1979 at Napa Valley College where he mentored many students who became professional and established photographers. From 2005-2017, he lead the photography department at Solano Community College and for the past thirty years Zak has coordinated travel courses for photographers to such locations as China, India, Cuba, Indonesia, Burma, Argentina, Paris, New York, and Vietnam.
