Nubar Alexanian was born in 1950 in Worcester, Massachusetts. He became passionate about photography while studying at Boston University, and later co-founded the Essex Photographic Workshop in Essex, Massachusetts. He has travelled and photographed extensively in Peru. His 1991 book of photographs from Peru, Stones in the Road, has been called by Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, “an authentic expression of our geography and our people, making at the same time a personal statement which is artistically original and morally compelling.”

In 1990 Alexanian started a five year project about music, travelling around the world with twenty-five musicians, including Paul Simon, Wynton Marsalis, Philip Glass, Emmylou Harris, and Phish. The resulting book, Where Music Comes From, published in 1996, captures the spirit of music, as it explores what inspires committed musicians.

In 2001, his book, Gloucester Photographs, about his home town of Gloucester Massachusetts, was published by Walker Creek Press. The publication of this book coincided with an exhibition of this and other recent work at the Cape Ann Historical Museum in Gloucester.

His new book, JAZZ, a collaboration with Wynton Marsalis, is his first narrative attempt at using images and words and is available only online at Walker Creek Press.

Alexanian’s many awards include a Fulbright Fellowship in 1983. His work has been featured in The New York Times Magazine, Life, Geo Fortune, National Geographic, and The London Sunday Times, among other publications around the world. He has had numerous one-person exhibitions in the United States and Europe, and his work is in private and museum collections internationally. He teaches workshops at the International Center of Photography in New York, and in the Boston area. Alexanian lives in Gloucester with his wife and daughter.

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