Photographer and Filter Photo Festival Executive Director, Sarah Hadley, is known for all the excellent work she is doing in Chicago, but she happens to live in Los Angeles. Born and raised in a prestigious Boston museum (see below–well, she wasn’t born in the museum..), she developed an early artistic sensibility. While in college, Sarah strayed to Venice, Italy where she fell in love with all things Venice and began her photography career. She returned to the states and finished a degree in Art History and went on to work at the National Gallery and the Library of Congress. After being inspired by Robert Frank’s retrospective, Sarah received a degree in photography at the Corcoran College of Art and went on to work for newspapers and magazines.

She eventually moved to Chicago, went to Ragdale, the artists and writers colony in Lake Forest, IL, and discovered the prairie. She was later asked to photograph the amazing Howard Van Doren Shaw house for “The Ragdale House Speaks”.  Sarah now lives in Los Angeles, where she regularly returns to Chicago for Filter business and to Venice to make work. Her passion, besides photography, is travel. In 2011, Sarah traveled for the second time to China as a curator for the Lishui Photo Festival and will continue to travel much of 2015.