About
Anthony Cepak is an award-winning photojournalist, designer and educator with two decades of industry and higher education experience. As a journalist he achieved honors for visual storytelling from the Associated Press, Michigan Press Association, Hoosier State Press Association and the Michigan Press Photographers Association; and his design and art direction earned him numerous ADDY awards from the Advertising Association of America and from the Public Relations Society of America.
Cepak’s research focuses on the relationship between agency and the production of visual messages across levels of inquiry. On a societal level, he is interested in the effects of culture on the representation of marginalized communities and on historical and contemporary depictions of violence and trauma in the news media. On network and interpersonal levels, he is interested in the intersection of power and issues of privacy and surveillance that occur in producing and sharing images online. Finally, on the intrapersonal level, he is interested in how visual messages shape and reinforce an individual’s visual construction of reality.
He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in journalism and photography from Central Michigan University, and a Master of Arts degree in International Journalism from Michigan State University. He is currently in his final year of the Media and Information Studies Ph.D. program at Michigan State University where he teaches introduction to graphic design and page layout.