Max Belcher was born in 1944 in Philadelphia. Ten years later, his father, an African American raised in North Carolina, and his mother, a Lithuanian/Polish Jew, emigrated with their son to Liberia. As a teen, Belcher began working in broadcasting, taking a position as a staff announcer for the Liberian Broadcasting Corporation. His experiences in Africa convinced him of the potential for low-cost instructional films to improve the lives of local people by helping to spread practical information on such topics as agriculture and health. Thus, in 1964 he returned to the United States to pursue a college education and acquire filmmaking skills.
Belcher's plans were quickly thwarted by the escalation of the Vietnam War. Feeling that the draft was inevitable, Belcher enlisted in the U.S. Marines, serving as a military broadcasting specialist in the U.S., South Vietnam, and at Armed Forces Radio and Television Service in Okinawa. After his tour of duty he settled in New York City, where he took a full-time job as a production assistant at NBC News and enrolled in college. He began his studies at Columbia University in 1968 but quickly transferred to the New School for Social Research, where a filmmaking instructor encouraged him to grow accustomed to seeing the world through the lens of a still camera. That training, initially intended to develop his skills as a filmmaker, introduced Belcher to the expressive potential of photography. Continuing his liberal arts studies at the New School, he also enrolled in a photography class at the School of Visual Arts. At the same time he began shooting experimental photos in and around New York City, often choosing friends, landscapes and local architecture as his subjects. Finishing his studies in 1971, he returned to Liberia with camera in hand, embarking on what would become his first major project as a professional photographer.
Since that time, Belcher has developed into one of the nation's premiere living photographers. His photographic interests in portraiture and vernacular architecture have developed in conjunction with the thematic exploration of racial identity, emigration and history that run through his work in Africa, Asia, North America, the Middle East, and the Caribbean. He has had numerous one-man shows in the eastern United States and has contributed to group exhibits across the U.S. and in Vietnam and Soviet Armenia. Belcher's photography is held both by private collectors and in the permanent collections of galleries and museums in the United States, Canada, and Vietnam. He has received major support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lila Wallace/Reader's Digest Fund, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Kenan Charitable Trust, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. His publications include House and Home: Spirits of the South (1994), A Land and Life Remembered: Americo-Liberian Folk Architecture (1988), both held by the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, and For Kids' Sake (1985). He has also taught black-and-white photography to beginning, intermediate and advanced students in Massachusetts, and is a frequent lecturer in New England. He currently resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts with his wife, Ellie Mandel.
From the guide to the Max Belcher Photography Collection, 1969-1998, (David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University)
