Randi Malkin Steinberger (b. 1960) is an American photographer and documentary filmmaker, whose work has been shown around the world over the past 25 years. A published author and curator, Randi Steinberger has collaborated with renowned artist Alighiero Boetti on two books: Accanto al Pantheon, published by Prearo Editions in Milan, and Boetti by Afghan People: Peshawar, Pakistan, 1990, released in late September 2011 from RAM Publications & Distribution.
Randi Steinberger’s experience as a photographer and filmmaker was shaped by her studies in Italy, where she lived for 10 years while launching a photography school and art gallery to show photography.
A Chicago native, Randi Steinberger studied art history and photography in Florence, beginning in 1983. There she worked as a fine art photographer and later produced artists’ books that are now part of the permanent collections of New York’s Museum of Modern Art and The Whitney Museum, and The Art Institute and Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.
During her stay in Italy, Randi Steinberger became acquainted with Boetti and commuted between Rome and Florence to collaborate with him. Together they produced the limited edition book, Accanto al Pantheon, which was later published by Prearo Editions in Milan. Their second collaboration brought Steinberger to the Afghan refugee camps outside Peshawar, Pakistan, where she documented the production of Boetti’s embroidered works. In September 2011 RAM Publications & Distribution will release a book of these photographs with essays in English and Italian entitled, Boetti by Afghan People: Peshawar, Pakistan, 1990. A suite of the photographs was shown at Gladstone Gallery in New York in 2010 as part of the exhibition Alighiero e Boetti: Mappe.
Boetti by Afghan People: Peshawar, Pakistan, 1990, serves as the companion to an upcoming Boetti exhibition organized by the prestigious Fowler Museum at University of California, Los Angeles, in association with Fondazione Azzurra, and complements a tightly focused exhibition at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art that features an iconic Boetti Mappa.
Randi Steinberger’s documentary films include the insightful portrait of the modern traveler, Holi-days, which shot in Jerusalem, Florence and Las Vegas, and aired on the Sundance Channel.
Randi Steinberger resides in Los Angeles with her husband and their two sets of twins. She is currently at work on A Stitch in Time Saves Nine Lives, a series that combines her personal snapshots with vernacular photographs. These pictures are stitched together with other discarded, found and forgotten photographs that she has collected along the way.
