Kathy Sloane began her professional life as a self taught photographer in San Francisco's Keystone Korner Jazz Club in 1976, drawn to the music of improvisation, beauty and resistance that was a metaphor for her of the civil rights struggles of the 1960's. While continuing to document the music, she committed herself to photographing the life of the San Francisco Bay Area with an emphasis on the multicultural and multiethnic richness of the area. Her self-assigned task has been to understand and depict the myriad ways various communities, often voiceless in mainstream media, give meaning and value to all of our lives. Workers, children immigrants, activists and artists have all collaborated with her to make a photographic mosaic of Bay Area life.Kathy Sloane has exhibited in New York, Oakland, Berkeley, and San Francisco California, and France and has won numerous awards for her still photographs, five of which were part of the Ken Burns' television mini-series "Jazz." Her work is in the permanent collections of the DeSaisset Museum in Santa Clara, CA, the Smithsonian Institution, Jazz Oral History Program, The East Bay Community Foundation, Alameda County Hospital and the Evelyn and Walter Haas jr. Fund. She has also produced photo essays for UNICEF in Grenada, West Indies; Global Deaf Connection in Jamaica, West Indies; and Head Start in New York City.