She earned her PhD at the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in visual communication and ethnographic research. Among her academic publications are two photographic ethnographies, Waucoma Twilight: Generations of the Farm (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992) and Contesting the Super Bowl (Routledge, 1997). Her photographic monograph, In the Kitchen, was published by Kehrer Verlag in 2009. Her award-winning photographs have been internationally exhibited and published, and her work is included in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Musée de l'Eysée, the George Eastman House, the Harry Ransom Center, the Portland Art Museum, and the Kinsey Institute. She is represented by Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto.