Sean Kernan is a photographer, writer, and teacher who came to photography from theater. He is the author of two monographs, The Secret Books (with Jorge Luis Borges) and Among Trees with Anthony Doerr. He also wrote Looking Into the Light: Creativity and the Photographer.

He has exhibited at galleries and museums accross the US and the world, including: Centre Regional de la Photographie, France; Biblioteca Alexandrina, Egypt; Photosynkiria, Thessaloniki, Greece; William Benton Museum, CT; Museo de la Ciudad, Queretaro, Mexico; Friends of Photography (San Francisco); Wesleyan University, Connecticut; Whitney Museum (New York), and as part of the Polaroid Project exhibition at the Amon Carter amd MIT museums. He has worked with Alison Chase Performance to create media for dance pieces at MASS MoCA, Guggenheim Projects in New York, and Portland Performing Arts Festival. The most recent was a theater/dance/multimedia piece, The Drowned Man.

He has produced and directed several award-winning documentary films, including: The Kampala Boxing Club, about boxing in Africa; Crow Stories, about the Crow Tribe of Montana; and A Mind of Winter. He contributed the concept for the CBS film, To America, and served as Associate Producer.

His photos have been published in the New York Times Magazine, Look, Smithsonian, New York, Harpers, Bloomberg, Communication Arts, Graphis, Polyrama (Switzerland), Photo World (China), as well as magazines in Iran, Greece, Italy, and Switzerland, and he has done a wide range of advertising work for clients such as AT&T, Amex, GE, Pratt & Whitney, Dow Jones, Harvard, and Knoll,

He has taught and lectured at the New School/Parsons, Art Center (Pasadena), Yale Medical School, International Center for Photography, University of Texas, Wesleyan University, and Maine Media and Santa Fe Workshops. He has won numerous awards, most recently from the Center in Santa Fe for teaching, as well as a an honorary doctorate from Art Center in Pasadena. He writes and lectures about creativity, the arts and commerce, with articles in Communication Arts, Graphis, and Lenswork, among others.

He lives and works in Stony Creek, Connecticut.