Francis Olschafskie

Francis Olschafskie is a 2025 artist grant recipient for excellence in photography from the Mass Cultural Council, marking his second time receiving this award. Previously, he was honored as a recipient of the same grant from the Massachusetts Artist Foundation and awarded two Artist Residencies.
His Photographs have been extensively exhibited across the U.S. and Europe and has been featured in multiple publications, magazines, and books. In New York City, he has exhibited at the Alan Klotz Gallery, The Ethan Cohen Gallery in Beacon, NY, and numerous times at The Photography Show presented by AIPAD in NYC, and exhibited at Paris Photo, both are annual international art fairs dedicated to photography. Additionally, his work has been shown at The Walker Art Center, the Museum of Modern Art (Paris), the Isentan Museum (Tokyo), the Greek Ministry of Culture (Athens), the Tisch School at NYU, the Robert Hull Fleming Museum in (Burlington), and the Photographic Resource Center (Boston).

Francis is known for his in-camera single image, urban photography. His current exhibition at the School House Gallery August 1st - 19th features new work created in 2025.

This year, Francis has also produced two books of his work: one entitled *Artificial Intelligence in Photography* and a second book, *Vietnam - UnWelcome*, which features photographs from earlier in his career.
He holds an undergraduate degree in photography from Massachusetts College of Art and a graduate degree from the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Francis has lectured at Oxford and Cambridge Universities and has been a faculty member in the photography programs at NYU, the School of Visual Arts graduate school, the International Center of Photography, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He currently divides his practice between New York City and Massachusetts.

In May 2025, Mr Olschafskie’s photographs were featured in the 2025 edition of FUTURE FAIR NYC.

In 2024, THE LANGUAGE of PLACE exhibtion included Mr Olschafskie’s work in a group show at the Schoolhouse gallery in Provincetown from March 2nd – May 5th.

In 2023, August 11 – 30, The SchoolHouse Gallery in Provincetown MA presented an exhibition of new Photographs by FRANCIS OLSCHAFSKIE and a suite of AI generated photographs. Olschafskie is well known for his ‘urban photography’, in-camera images at carefully found and selected locations. In this series Olschafskie takes ‘pictures of pictures’, photographs of deep spaces built with reflection, action, chance, and intention. These are rich and complex images that dazzle with light, color, and illusion. For this exhibit Olschafskie couples these color photographs with new AI generated photographs. He claims a sameness between the construction of both in the ways they are produced; inherently from within a knowledge base, transmuting the substance of gender, beauty, and identity, shifting … all of these components working to lift the portraits into a world of wonder.

Artificial Intelligence and Photography
A Series of pictures created using Artificial Intelligence.. The driving force behind this body of work was the "particular moment" in the development of AI image creation technology.

In 2023 Mr Olschafskie’s photographs were featured during ART MIAMI at Palm Beach Modern + Commentary, West Palm Beach, FL.

In 2022, Mr Olschafskie exhibited at the SchoolHouse Gallery in Provincetown, MA.

In 2022, Mr Olschafskie exhibited at the Alan Klotz Gallery, NYC.

In 2022 Mr Olschafskie’s photographs were featured at The Association of International Photography Art Dealers Photography Show, AIPAD. New York, NY.

In 2022 Mr Olschafskie’s photographs were featured during ART MIAMI at Palm Beach Modern + Commentary, West Palm Beach, FL.

In 2021, PROVINCETOWN ART ASSOCIATION AND MUSEUM
Provincetown, MA July 23 – Sept 19, 2021
The exhibition presented a large selection of recent photographs by Francis Olschafskie. The photographs on view were primarily from the last decade and are the result of a period of intense concentration on a particular set of subjects, methods, and sources that embody a culmination of his ideas and interests from his extensive photographic career.

In 2020, Mr Olschafskie exhibited at the Alan Klotz Gallery, NYC.

In 2020, Mr Olschafskie exhibited at the SchoolHouse Gallery in Provincetown, MA.

In 2019, Mr Olschafskie exhibited at the Fine Arts Work Center Gallery in Provincetown, MA.

In 2019, Mr Olschafskie were featured at The Association of International Photography Art Dealers Photography Show, AIPAD. New York, NY.

In 2018, Mr Olschafskie exhibited at the SchoolHouse Gallery in Provincetown, MA.

In 2018, Mr Olschafskie exhibited at The Association of International Photography Art Dealers Photography Show, AIPAD. New York, NY.

In 2018, Olschafskie's work was placed in the Yale University Collection of Photography, New Haven CT.

In 2018, Olschafskie's work was placed in the Joe Baio Collection of Photography, NYC.

In 2018, Mr Olschafskie exhibited at the Alan Klotz Gallery, NYC.

In 2017, Mr Olschafskie exhibited at the SchoolHouse Gallery in Provincetown, MA.

In 2016, Mr Olschafskie exhibited at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA.

In 2015 - 2005, Francis Olschafskie had a one person exhibition at the ArtStrand Gallery in Provincetown, MA, where he has exhibited every year for a decade.

In 2014, Francis Olschafskie’s work was exhibited in the “Message and Means” exhibition at Columbia University. The exhibition is a review of the work of the influential MIT Media Lab’s Visible Language Workshop.

In 2011, as part of “Paris Photo”, Francis's work was featured in an exhibition entitled EXPOSITION ÉCLATS DE PHOTOGRAPHIE at le musée Adrien Mentienne , Bry-sur-Marne, France.

In March of 2009 Francis’s work was included in an exhibition at the Center for Book Arts in NYC. The exhibition was entitled “Artists Books as Culture”. The exhibition included work from individual artists as well as works from museum collections including the MOMA and the Smithsonian.

In 2008, Olschafskie's photographs were placed in the Special Collections of the Bodleian Library at Oxford University.

In France in 2007, Mr Olschafskie was honored and presented an honorarium at the state of the city address by the mayor of Bry Sur Marne, France, for his work at the Daguerre Association, Bry Sur Marne, France.