Christine Osinski originally wanted to be a painter. She quickly tired of being isolated in a studio, however, and turned to photography in her final undergraduate semester at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. During more than thirty years as a photographer and professor, she has undertaken various projects, including the series From Staten Island and Swimmers. Osinski has been photographing her students at the Cooper Union School of Art for the past eighteen months, as the school is in danger of being closed down. Recognizing the courageousness of choosing a career in art, Osinski is urgently taking dignified portraits of her students and the faculty, who she says feel “like an endangered species.”