Ernie: A Photographer's Memoir

This is the text that appears opposite this picture in the book:

About the author:

Tony Mendoza was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1941. He left for Miami with his family in 1960. He bought his first camera at age eleven and continued photographing through grammar school, high school, Yale University (Bachelor of Engineering) and the Harvard Graduate School of Design (Master of Architecture.) In 1973, to the dismay of his creditiors and relatives, he turned full time to the pursuit of photography as art. Since then, his work has been exhibited and published widely. He is the author of five books, including Cuba: Going Back (1999), Stories (1987), and the original Ernie (1985). He has received three National Enowment for the Arts Photography Fellowships, a Guggenheim Photography Fellowship, as well as two Creative Writing Fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council. For the past twelve years he has taught photography at the Ohio State University.