Board Members
President and Treasurer
Chuck Fehl
Chuck has been a member of MiPHS since 2009, a Board member since 2019 and Treasurer since 2021. He is a retired banker who has been collecting cameras since the 1970s. A transplant from Cleveland, he and his family have been residents of Farmington since the early 1990s. He specializes in usable classic cameras from Germany and Japan. A more recent interest is in instant photography with the rebirth of new film stock and cameras from Polaroid’s reboot.
Chuck was instrumental in organizing our new collaboration with the Photographic Historical Society of New England (“PHSNE”) where he has made several board member contacts. See article in the Summer 2024 Photogram about his visit to their annual show. We can now share in each other’s excellent website, newsletters and Zoom presentations. Check out “phsne.org” and our recently updated “miphs.org”. His wife Karen is our Photogram Editor and website manager.
Vice President - Communications
Nick Valenti
Nick Valenti earned a BFA degree in ART/Photography in 1980 and a MA degree in ART/Photography from Wayne State University in 1984. He began his teaching career at Oakland Community College as an adjunct instructor in 1983. In 1996, Nick became a full-time Faculty member at Oakland Community College in both analog and digital photography. In 1995, he introduced the first digital imaging courses to the curriculum at OCC. He enjoys teaching a wide range of courses in wet-lab (darkroom), digital imaging, studio practices, history of photography, and art appreciation. In 1998, Nick installed one of the few permanent Camera Obscuras in Michigan, turning his classroom into a teaching tool for optics and the invention of photography. In addition to his teaching, he serves as Chair of the Fine and Performing Arts Department at the Orchard Ridge Campus in Farmington Hills and serves as a Board Member of the Michigan Photographic Historical Society.
An avid collector of over 1,200 books on photography, Nick's interest in image-making spans the range from street photography to landscape and documentary photography utilizing analog formats from 35mm up to 5” x 7” in addition to panoramic cameras. Among his favorite photographers are Eugène Atget, Gordon Parks, and Detroit native Harry Callahan.
In addition to his career in photography at OCC, Nick has coached Novi HS and the OCC Soccer Club and taught credit courses in Fencing (Foil, Épée, and Sabre), earning the USFCA level of Moniteur de Fleuret in Foil (2011). Nick lives in Northville with wife Marsha, sons Jack and Audie, and dog Apollo.
Vice President - Programs
Cynthia Motzenbecker
Cindy Motzenbecker is a retired electrical engineering technician and worked in Research and Development. She's been involved with MiPHS since the late 1980s, starting out as treasurer, rotating through all the various positions, now president emeritus. Cindy is mostly an image collector but is known to buy a few cameras, mostly wood and brass. After thirty plus years, she “knows all the usual suspects...”
Secretary
Bill Christen
Bill and his wife, Glenna Jo, live in Chelsea, Michigan. They have two grown children and four grandchildren. They are members of the Chelsea Area Historical Society and the Michigan Photographic Historical Society.
Bill was an automotive engineer for General Motors for thirty-seven years before taking early retirement in 2002. He received a degree in mechanical engineering from Kettering University (formerly General Motors Institute) and attended the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit, studying industrial design and fine arts. After retirement, he taught as a substitute teacher in the Warren Consolidated Schools for ten years.
Bill, with Glenna Jo’s assistance, wrote a biography of Pauline Cushman, a nineteenth-century actress and a Civil War spy in Middle Tennessee. The book, Pauline Cushman: Spy of the Cumberland, was published in 2009 by Edinborough Press. Together they cataloged all the known imaged of Cushman—about eighty.
Over thirty-five years ago Bill began researching and collecting men’s clothing (1850–75) while building a civilian’s wardrobe for living history and (re)enactment events. Glenna Jo, who is also a nineteenth-century historian, and Bill have assembled a modest collection of original garments and a large collection of period photographs for their own research. They make their collection available for others to study. Both of them have worked with independent film companies making documentaries and other films about the Civil War.
Bill has an interest in several Civil War regiments. One, in particular, the Seventeenth Michigan Infantry, has been the focus of thirty-five years of ongoing research and writing. Several years ago he and Glenna Jo cataloged, transcribed, and annotated a collection of five hundred documents and a dozen diaries belonging to a Connecticut family having three of its five sons in several Connecticut units. He also has an interest in the US Navy during World War I as his grandfather served on the battleship USS Indiana.
The first photo in his collection was an 1880s copy CdV of John Wilkes Booth that he found in a family atlas as a teenager. He has been a member of the MiPHS Board of Directors since 2015.
Member-at-Large
Doug Aikenhead
Doug Aikenhead is a photographer and educator. He received his MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and has taught photography and history of photography at several schools including the College of Creative Studies, the University of Michigan, and Washtenaw Community College. He is co-editor of Detroit Images: Photographs of the Renaissance City (Wayne State University Press, 1989). He collects real photo postcards and has written numerous articles about them, including several for The Photogram. Doug has served on the MiPHS Board of Directors since 2020 and has held the positions of Treasurer and Vice President for Special Events.
Member-at-Large
Dietmar Haenchen
I was born and grew up in Berlin Germany. I also studied mechanical engineering there. I started to work at Volkswagen in Wolfsburg, Germany in vehicle development in the 1960’s. In 1974 I got a job at Volkswagen of America in New Jersey and later transferred to Michigan to work at Volkswagen Manufacturing. Most of my work was in vehicle safety, emissions and vehicle testing. I retired in 2006.
I started to do photography with my family’s medium format camera in my preteen years. In my early twenties I finally could afford better cameras. Initially I used a Voigtländer Vito III rangefinder camera, but soon switched to Single Lens Reflex (SLR) cameras. In the 1990’s I switched to Canon autofocus cameras.
Even though I use digital cameras now, I find it interesting to look into film cameras and older lenses. I use some historic lenses on my Sony Alpha A7 digital cameras. Some of these lenses are amazingly good and have great bokeh, but some others are disappointing.
I like travel, nature and macro photography. Most of the time I use zoom lenses for convenience, but higher speed prime lenses come in handy for low light images or to isolate the subject from the background. I definitely like the modern cameras with fast autofocus because they offer much better opportunities in travel, street and nature photography.
Traveling is one of my other interests and I like to visit other countries. In Latin America I make it a point to stay with local families whenever I have the opportunity. This provides for a better immersion into the culture and a chance to make new friends. Asia and Europe also provide a great opportunity to experience different cultures.
Member-at-Large
Yuki Kawai
Yuki became a member of MiPHS about 50 years ago, residing in Ann Arbor at that time. Subsequently he moved to Japan, UK, back to Japan, and back to Ann Arbor, now living in Saline, Michigan. He enjoyed MiPHS so much that he did not cancel his membership even while he was away from the US.
He started taking photographs using a folding bed type camera that used glass plates when he was about 10. He was a member of photography clubs throughout his school years. The technological developments of photographic equipment as well as photographs made by famous photographers fascinate him. He enjoys researching and collecting historically important mechanical and optical photographic equipment. He is particularly interested in products made by Nikon, Canon, Leitz, Zeiss and Voigtländer, among others. His favorite photographers are Eugène Atget, Robert Doisneau, and David Douglas Duncan, to name a few.
Yuki belongs to several photo enthusiasts’ societies in the US and abroad.
Member-at-Large
Bruce Powelson
Member-at-Large
Heather Gardner
Heather worked as a photography Paraprofessional for Oakland
Community College’s Royal Oak campus. She works as a digital photography
instructor for the Digital Photo Academy. She is a freelance photojournalist and
serves as a Director of the Ann Arbor Area Crappy Camera Club. She has a
particular interest in collodion wet plate and other historic processes.
Member-at-Large
Jeffrey Rowe
Jeff has been a member of MiPHS since 2021 and has enjoyed the camaraderie and learning opportunities afforded by the group, and is excited about becoming a Board Member at Large. In his former life he was a product designer and technical writer who has had a lifelong interest in photographic techniques, genres, history, and camera equipment. He and his wife split their time between Michigan and Colorado and feel fortunate to enjoy the beauty and benefits of each. Among other things, Jeff is currently a volunteer docent/presenter at various locations around The Henry Ford/Greenfield Village that includes The Tin Type Studio. His favorite photographic experiences are observational documentary, street, and industrial scenes with prime lenses. He loves photographing when traveling but also realizes that there are always photographic opportunities in his own backyard in Dearborn and the surrounding area. For Jeff, photography is a lifelong journey of learning but always mindful of enjoying the moment.
Member-at-Large
Clint Hryhorijiw
My interest in photography began in high school, when I discovered that volunteering as the yearbook photographer got me into events and venues that I otherwise couldn’t get into (like football games and concerts), and out of things that I wanted to get out of (like early morning classes). This continued throughout my college days: my choice of campus was much more closely connected to the proximity to a decent darkroom and student publications and university departments who used my photos than to some sort of academic curriculum. I did, nonetheless, pay my way through school in part by selling photos to anyone on campus who would buy them.At was at university that I began to embrace all things historic, especially those things associated with the history of photography. What better place to pursue this than at a place with numerous archives ?I have continued my deep interest in the pursuit of the history of photography of the world through association and membership in various societies and historical groups throughout North America, Europe and Africa, often holding executive or director positions. I have never feared “getting my hands a little dirty” and I tend NOT to stand on the sidelines.