Born and raised in New York state, Tory Read has been a professional photographer and writer since she got her M.A. in Journalism at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in 1991. After graduate school, she worked as a photojournalist for The Oakland Tribune and the Associated Press in San Francisco. Read opened her own studio in Denver when she synchronized orbits with David Grinspoon and moved to Colorado in 1993.
        In 1994, Greenpeace International commissioned and published Read’s first two books, about community rights and coastal resources in Papua New Guinea.
        Inspired by the community-driven work she had documented in Papua New Guinea, Read spent the next five years in Denver creating a method for community photography projects in which every-day people used photography to express themselves and talk about how to solve community problems. This work attracted many sponsors, including the Colorado Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the United States Department of Justice, and the Denver Foundation. Tory was a finalist for an Open Society Institute Fellowship in 1998.
        Shooting for Peace: Building Community Through Photography presents Read’s method as well as photos and texts created by more than 200 people in a multi-year project she led in Denver’s Five Points neighborhood. PDN recognized Shooting for Peace as one of the best photo web sites of 2002.
        In 2001, Read photographed, co-authored and produced Stories at the Forest Edge, a look at community-based conservation practices in Indonesia, supported by Biodiversity Support Program (a consortium of World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy and World Resources Institute, funded by United States Agency for International Development).
        In 2002, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) commissioned Navigating a New Course, in which Read tells community-based conservation stories from five Pacific island countries, emphasizing lessons learned by community members over the course of a 10-year Global Environment Facility (GEF) funding initiative.
        UNDP has distributed more than 10,000 copies around the globe and presented Navigating a New Course at numerous international meetings and conferences as a model for project documentation.
        Since 2003, Read has documented numerous community development stories for national and international clients. Her recent publications include Community Building Wisdom, Democracy in Action, Unleashing the Power of Parents, and The Gates Cherokee Redevelopment Project. She lives in North Denver with her husband David Grinspoon. Read loves music, dancing, hiking, gardening, breakfast dates with her girlfriends and the antics of her three cats.

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