"A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know." -Diane Arbus

Taylor Ballek is a photojournalist from Chicago, IL with a B.S. degree in photojournalism from Central Michigan University. She worked as a staff photographer and later on as the photo editor at CM-Life when the staff was awarded a National Pacemaker Award for 2013-2014. Taylor was awarded the Michigan Press Association Foundation Scholarship and award in 2014.  In 2015 she was awarded third place for Michigan College Photographer of the year. She studied abroad in Peru where she took a multimedia course that allowed her to begin a project with children at an orphanage, in which she plans to continue into the future. She interned at the Grand Rapids Press from May 2015 to May 2016. In May 2016 she also began her internship with Health Beat at Spectrum Health Hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan where she has been working as a full-time staff photographer since May 2017. She plans to continue working on long-term documentary work and allowing photojournalism to take her on a life-long adventure of traveling to new sights and meeting new people.