What do you get when you combine a seasoned commercial photographer with an anthropologist? You get a rare mix of storytelling depth, emotional power, and technical skill. You get Eric O’Connell.

With studio locations in Albuquerque, Arizona, New Orleans, and Hamburg, Germany, Eric has created award-winning work for clients as diverse as Oracle, Ritz Carlton, Cadillac, Quicken, Microsoft, Symantec, Silhouette, Forbes, Fortune, and Wired, who appreciate his easy ability to work with people and bring concepts to life.

On a parallel journey, Eric did an M.A. in visual anthropology at USC, focusing his lens on the social and psychological undercurrents of everyday life. His fine-art photography often looks for the heroic in the seemingly mundane, exploring intimate human truths in search of deeper cultural understanding. His work is housed in the permanent collections of the 911 Museum in New York, the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University, and the Monroe Gallery of Photography in Santa Fe. And his groundbreaking Cowboys: East Germany is Texas Folklife Museum’s longest-running solo show.

There’s a tension in Eric’s work between truth and mystery, beauty and emotional intensity, cultural curiosity and commercial know-how. And that’s what makes every image so powerful, so engaging, and ultimately, so effective.