Born in New Haven, CT, Mary Zompetti is a photographic artist and professor living and working in Roanoke, VA. She holds an MFA in Visual Arts from the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University and a BFA in Visual Arts from Vermont State University.
Her work has been exhibited for over 20 years both nationally and internationally, including at the Vermont Center for Photography, the Photographic Resource Center, the A.I.R. Gallery, the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum, the Griffin Museum of Photography, and the Mjólkurbúðin Gallery in Akureyri, Iceland. She has been awarded artist residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences, the Gil Residency in Akureyri, Iceland and Nocefresca in Milis, Sardinia.
Her photographs have been published in several books and magazines, including The Sun Magazine and in a recent volume from Another Earth Press, What Makes a Lake – Tracing Movement, featuring 80 artists creating a collaborative portrait the Earth’s rivers, lakes and oceans. Her work is held in several collections, including the artist book libraries at Yale University and the Banff Center for Arts and Creativity and the art collections of the University of Vermont Medical Center and Capitol One.
In 2020, she was a recipient of the Vermont Arts Council Creation Grant in support of new and experimental cameraless photographic work, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. To further this work, she was granted a Provost Award for Summer Research in 2022, a Cabell Fellowship for Sabbatical Research in 2025 from Hollins University, and the Mednick Faculty Fellowship from the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges.
From 2004-2020, she ran a public-access community darkroom and digital lab in Burlington, VT, and she is currently an Associate Professor of Photography at Hollins University, a historically women's college in Southwest VA, where she teaches traditional and experimental photographic methods.