Pomona College celebrates Stephen Marc (Smith), whose award-winning photography and its cultural impact has earned him the 2026 Blaisdell Distinguished Alumni Award.
"Passage on the Underground Railroad," combines a photograph of an Underground Railroad site with handwritten text from a slave owner ordering shoes for his slaves. (Digital montage, 2005).
Marc competed on the Pomona-Pitzer track team, earning national honors in the sprints. A two-time team MVP, he was inducted into the Pomona-Pitzer Athletics Hall of Fame in 1986.
Crisscrossing the United States with his camera in hand, Stephen Marc (Smith) ’76 set out to create the first comprehensive photographic survey of Americans made by an African American.
For Marc — an accomplished documentary and street photographer, digital montage artist and educator — the project’s roots trace back more than four decades to a photography class at Pomona College. The survey was ambitious, but Marc has never been one to shy away from a challenge.
“If there is something that you really want to do, don’t believe it when people tell you that you can’t do it,” says Marc, an emeritus professor of photography in the Herberger Institute’s School of Art at Arizona State University. “Find out why they think you can’t succeed and then do something about it.”
Marc is being honored with the 2026 Blaisdell Distinguished Alumni Award by Pomona’s Alumni Board selection committee. This award recognizes alumni who carry the spirit of the College beyond the Gates and demonstrate exceptional achievement in their professions or community service.
“It is a real honor because Pomona College had a major impact on my life and career,” Marc says. “Trying to live up to this award will further fuel and reinforce my creative drive, since I am only as good as my next work — and I’m hoping I haven’t created my best work yet.”
Marc developed an interest in photography during high school in Chicago but initially pursued a major in psychology. His first photography class at Pomona was taught by Leland Rice, a highly regarded photographer and curator, who worked as a lecturer. Rice inspired Marc and remains a friend and mentor. He recalls that Rice didn’t treat him like a student, but as a younger photographer.
“I was allowed to pursue photography, even though it was my first art class and I was a first semester junior,” Marc says. “But he saw the intensity that I was approaching it with. So, an exception was made to see if I could do it.”
While at Pomona, Marc also competed on the Pomona-Pitzer track team, earning national honors in the sprint distances. He was an NAIA All-American and five-time NCAA Division III All-American and still holds an all-time program record in the 110-meter hurdles (14.19), competing as Stephen Smith. A two-time team MVP, Marc was inducted into the Pomona-Pitzer Athletics Hall of Fame in 1986.
Marc says that competing in track and field, combined with Pomona’s interdisciplinary coursework in art history, studio art, psychology and electives like “Mind, Culture and Sport,” taught by former Pomona-Pitzer coach, Pat Mulcahy ’66, an emeritus professor of physical education, “greatly impacted how I approached my 46-year career as an educator and ongoing creative practice as a photographic artist.”
Marc’s most recent book, published in 2023, “Street Cat Tales and Tangled Times: An American Journey Continues,” documents our complicated era in American history.
“Stephen Marc’s work is very important, especially in the context of race, social justice and racism,” says Victoria Sancho Lobis ’23, director of the Benton Museum and associate professor of art history at Pomona College. She commends his landmark project, “Passage on the Underground Railroad,” (2005) for which Marc spent over nine years traveling the routes followed by fugitive slaves, resulting in “thought-provoking, unconventional and haunting digital images.”
In 2021, Marc was named a Guggenheim fellow in photography, recognizing a career marketed by sustained creative excellence and cultural impact. His work has been widely exhibited at major institutions, including the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Chicago Cultural Center and the Smithsonian Institution.
“Throughout my life, I’ve tried to find things that bring me joy and a sense of purpose,” Marc says. “That’s what has sustained me and still drives my work today.”
Visit our website to read more about the 2026 Pomona College alumni award honorees.