Biography

Duncan Hartley is the Owner of Duncan Hartley Fine Art Photography. Duncan became an entrepreneur in the eighth grade by taking a freelance job with a high-quality weekly newspaper doing all the paper's darkroom work and most of its photography during a nine-year period. By the tenth grade, his personal fine-art photographs were winning national awards and being published in national magazines. In graduate school, Duncan received a Ph.D. in Shakespearian drama, and taught university courses in English literature for eight years. He was then recruited to a senior position in international education with the Young President's Organization (YPO), a highly influential group in New York City. This afforded Duncan with the daily opportunity to interact with and learn from presidents, CEOs, and thought leaders of some of the most powerful corporations in the world. After five years, a colleague on the YPO staff encouraged Duncan to pursue a career in philanthropy. Duncan subsequently held senior positions at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer, the School of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University, and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Duncan then returned full-time to fine-art photography, and 150 of his photographs are in the permanent collections of major museums and historical collections. He is currently completing a book on New York City that will begin with the classic years in New York from 1957 to the Bicentennial in 1976, and then Little Italy and another neighborhood. A second book is planned in conjunction with a colleague and friend at YPO.