Gary Cardot is a graduate of Ohio University and the University of Massachusetts where he received bachelors and master’s degrees in history. After teaching history and working as a director of the arts program at the Martin Luther King Center in Erie, Pennsylvania, he studied photography at the California Institute of the Arts and graduated with an MFA in art from CalArts in 1990. He taught photography and art history as an assistant professor at Mercyhurst University in Erie, Pennsylvania from 1990 to 2024. He is currently an independent scholar and finishing a book on the history of photographic postcards of Erie and an interpretation of their contents with an emphasis on urban design. He has exhibited in galleries and museums nationally, both juried and invitational shows, and was awarded a Mid-Atlantic Arts grant to document architecture in Buffalo, New York. He has worked in landscape studies, architectural photography, and still lifes.