Born in Edinburg, Texas, on the South Texas borderlands with Mexico, educated in finance and economics at the University of Texas and Harvard University, Sharon Stewart now resides in the mountain village of Chacón, Mora County NM. For three decades she has extensively photographed the economic, social, familial, and religious influences that define the cultural landscape of Northern New Mexico in Exit West: A Cultural Confluence.

Stewart’s engagements with her community have included serving on its Agua Pura Mutual Domestic Water Association board, coordinating the successful effort to save Chacon’s 125 year old postal service, and contributing to a yearly celebration of Mora Valley rituals and traditions, La Cultural Cura. As well, her long form survey of El Cerrito, NM, El Agua es la Vida (Water is Life), explores village life and acequia culture. This and her photonarrative, Toxic Tour of Texas, portraying the efforts of grassroots environmental activists to protect the health of their land, water, air, families, and culture from the effects of hazardous waste policies of government and industry, are included in the Water in the West Project and Archive. The eleven member photographers self-directed projects to document the politics and history of water use in the American West.

Stewart is now actively chronicling the continuum of effects from the 2022 Hermit’s Peak + Calf Canyon conflagration in her home valley.