About the Author/Photographer

Mark Zannoni is a Cleveland-based photographer and life-long Cleveland booster. After shooting for the Plain Press in the late 1980s, he has worked independently, focusing mostly on portraiture, urban, editorial, and documentary content. He has documented places and events throughout the US, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa and has captured imagery for multiple media platforms. In 2014, he completed a major photo documentary project examining contemporary Vietnam from the perspective of the war. The work documented the current and enduring remnants of war, peace and reconciliation, US-Vietnam diplomacy, and the social and economic development of post-war Vietnam, covering the extent of the country from Haiphong in the north to the Mekong Delta in the south.  While the legacy of the Vietnam War in America is well documented, before this title, little existed on the topic as a comprehensive work as it related to Vietnam itself. The book represents an American perspective on the Vietnam War from within modern Vietnam,  providing new data and insight through the medium of images to document contemporary Vietnam, and in a broader sense, a study on war and reconciliation itself.

His first photo documentary was completed in 1990, produced in Zimbabwe, about the then-civil war in neighboring Mozambique and the impact of war as depicted through a refugee camp. Also of note, he captured—as far as is generally known—the first-ever image on film of the events of 9/11, in which one can see the initial fireball from the plane’s impact as well as the immediate debris falling to the ground from 1 World Trade Center. This image is in The New York Times archives. The Official Cleveland ABC Book, his latest title, is a fun, light-hearted, yet meaningful project, aimed to educate and nurture young minds while presenting and documenting the splendors of Cleveland, which he has been capturing for decades. His educational background includes a BA from Boston University and an MS from Columbia University.