Yee-Fun Yin teaches photography at Taft. He is also highly regarded as a professional documentary portraiture artist, and a force to be reckoned with on the squash courts. Yin spent his childhood in Burma and Laos, and speaks fluent Mandarin. He attended Yale as an undergraduate.

“I love photography because it’s project oriented,” Yin says, “and I found I really loved teaching. Knowing that I’ve helped change lives? That’s pretty satisfying.”

Yin’s training as an architect brings a technical precision to his work; his quest for a medium that embodies self-expression brought him to photography. Yin’s teaching emphasizes both.

“My students need to pay attention to the technical aspects, in order to define their craftsmanship,” says Yin. “But then they must realize the distinction between taking a picture and making a picture. Anyone can snap a picture. I want my students to learn to be deliberate, to think about what we are making. I want them to make it personal, so that they achieve self-expression through their art… I love to watch my students learn that photography is interconnected to their lives and their learning.”