Christy Karpinski was born and raised in Arizona. She received her B.A. in Women's Studies from the University of Arizona in 1997. In her academic studies she focused on issues of identity and of how we makes sense of ourselves and others in the world. Many of these ideas have carried over into her photographic work. She received her MFA in photography from Columbia College Chicago in June 2005. Giraffes Handfull of sand Invisible Stella Untitled Untitled Untitled Untitled Most recently Christy has been working on a project exploring childhood and how we, as adults, understand it. Through documenting ordinary everyday experiences with the children she knows she is attempting to question and rethink our ideas of what it is to be a child or child-like, as opposed and in relation to adult and adult-like. Christy is interested in how we have defined “adult” and “child” as opposites leaving no room for the in-between. She has been exploring what happens in that space in between these polarized ideas, the place where the reality of adults and children overlap. Christy’s photographs result from her own experience of this overlap, taken while spending time with the children she knows. Christy's work was recently shown at UP Gallery and the A+D 11 Gallery in Chicago as well as at the Griffin Museum of Photography and the Lincoln/Belmont branch of the Chicago Public Library. It has been published in the book Home Life and has been published in Shots Magazine, StoryQuarterly 39, FOTO POZYTYW and Feline Magazine.