About

JERRI ZBIRAL (b. 1948) was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia. She received a Master of Fine Arts degree in photography from the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York.  She was Director of the Inner-City Photo Workshop at CAM Academy; Founder and Director of the Photography Center at the Public Art Workshop and Director of the Community Arts Center at the Uptown Hull House where she worked both as arts administrator and teacher. While at The Public Arts Workshop, she also directed a special photography program for the hearing impaired. 

With Alan Teller, she is a partner in The Collected Image, exhibiting vintage and contemporary photography and appraising photographic, film and book collections. 

Over the last 40+ years, Jerri has had an extensive publication and exhibition record of her personal photography, and has received numerous grants for her own work as well as funding for the various community programs.  She has both written and been the subject of many articles in newspapers, books and magazines (see the “Resume” section.)

Jerri has directed and produced the award winning and internationally screened documentary films: Never Turning Back, The World of Peggy Lipschutz and, with Alan Teller, In the Shadow of Memory: Legacies of Lidice.  She is co-Director of the Fulbright-Nehru funded project Following the Box, which is based on a found box of photographs from 1942.  This 3,000 sq. ft. exhibition, which involves Alan and Jerri as well as ten contemporary Indian artists, has been touring India and the U.S for the last 5 years.  She and Alan also produced a documentary film version of Following the Box.

Jerri also serves as a French language interpreter at the Marjorie Kovler Center for Victims of Torture.  She lives and works in Evanston, IL.