David Zimmerman (photographer)

David J. Zimmerman (born 1955) is an American photographer who works on long-term projects of social documentary and landscape photography. His works include landscape photographs in deserts of the American southwest, still life studies in communities of marginalized inhabitants in New Mexico, and portraits of Tibetan refugees living in India.
Zimmerman's monograph, "One Voice: Portraits from the Tibetan Diaspora" was published in 2017.
Zimmerman has won the L'Iris d'Or, 'Photographer of the Year' at the Sony World Photography Awards. He is a member of the World Photographic Academy.
Life and work.
Zimmerman was born in 1955 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He graduated from Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, California in 1981 with a degree in photography.
Photographer Mary Ellen Mark called Zimmerman's "Desert" works "a unique vision of the beauty, poetry and power possible in great landscape photography". Of Zimmerman's series "Last Refuge" – photographs in marginalized communities in New Mexico, photo historian Carole Naggar writes:
Zimmerman's work, "One Voice: Portraits from the Tibetan Diaspora" (2012–2017) was photographed in Tibetan villages, nomad camps, and refugee settlements in India. Robert Hariman writes (in his essay "The Last Individuals") "The portraits are profoundly evocative precisely because they draw on deep wells of moral and artistic truth. By risking dismissal for being conventional, they each paradoxically achieve the singularity of a work of art."
Zimmerman has been a guest artist in Mumbai, India at the Photographers Guild of India in 2005, and the National Centre for the Performing Arts in 2013. In 2014 he presented a seminar of the work "One Voice" at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles.
In 2011 Zimmerman co-founded the Himalayan Art Centre – a school providing free education in visual story-telling through photography and filmmaking in Dharamshala, India.
In July 2020, David Zimmerman partnered with the digital collectible cards company Phil Ropy and created a card to raise awareness for The Tibet Fund. The picture on the card shows a portrait of a Tibetan monk from his monograph, "One Voice: Portraits from the Tibetan Diaspora". The card is displayed on the home page of the Tibet Fund’s website and the proceeds from the sales of the card are redistributed to the organization. 
Technique.
Zimmerman's "Gulf Coast" portraits were photographed with an 8×10 inch large format view camera.