FROM GHANA TO A BEE TRUCKER IN WISCONSIN TO MOTHER TERESA

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July 9, 2022

For information on enrollment and registration at Notre Dame, an independent, Catholic, International Baccalaureate school, please visit the admissions section of our website here.

World traveling alum and professional photographer who worked on NDPMA annual report and has taken photos in nearly every Catholic church in the Archdiocese of Detroit is glad the pandemic is waning. 

When Notre Dame alum Dwight Cendrowski ND'70 graduated from the University of Michigan with a BA in journalism, the last thing he thought he’d be doing for the rest of his life was professional photography. Photography was only just a hobby for him back then.

But around the year 1978, he started working professionally for clients, both newspapers and hospitals, shooting photos of corporate executives, manufacturing facilities and, yes, even Mother Teresa. He also traveled to Africa with a Detroit-area bishop to help chronicle the trip for the Archdiocese of Detroit.

“My initial dream was to get on a newspaper staff after college,” said Cendrowski, who graduated from Notre Dame in 1970. “But the jobs just were not there, so I did photography work for several newspapers on a freelance basis. Those included the Observer & Eccentric newspapers and a number of features for the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press Sunday magazines.”

Eye-opening trip

He also picked up quite a bit of work for many years from the Michigan Catholic, which used to be the AOD's primary newspaper. 

“I joke with people that I’ve probably been in every Catholic church in the tri-county area,” he said. “Plus, that trip to Ghana with Bishop Moses Anderson in 1990 was such a fascinating trip.”

Cendrowski said he’s got many file cabinets filled with photos — and now in the digital age, many hard drives — from more than 40 years of photography. He’s also picked up quite a bit of video work over the past 15-20 years. The Harvard Business School was one of his clients and in 2015, Cendrowski worked on a photo shoot for the NDPMA annual report of donors.

Now close to 70 years old, Cendrowski is looking to wind down a career that has taken him to countless shoots over those 40-plus years. It's a decision that was "helped along" by the extraordinary last few years of the global pandemic.

The pandemic effect

"I’m in a transition period now and winding down the business," he said. "I’m turning 70 this month and it’s just time. I don’t want to continue hauling lighting cases around till I drop. I’m in a good spot where I can just do assignments that I want to do. I’ll be figuring out just what this next chapter in my life will look like as the months go by."

Like everyone doing his type of work, the pandemic brought nearly everything to a screeching halt for Cendrowski in March of 2020. All the assignments he had lined up were canceled, and most companies went into survival mode, stopping just about all marketing that required photography.

"Most of my work involves ‘people’ photos, and no one was coming into an office," he said. "When I did go into offices, it was pretty arduous taking all the required precautions: masking, wiping down laptops, shooting only in big rooms, and getting special releases for the portrait subjects to sign. And work at the University of Michigan, one of my bigger longtime clients, stopped, too, though it seems things are slowly getting back to normal."

So now that he's in a position to look back and reflect on an extraordinary career, what things stand out for him more than others?

“Those three weeks in Ghana were an eye-opening look at a society so different from ours,” he said. “And yet I came away with the strong sense that at base people are very similar and want the same things in life.”

Bee trucking

He said Ghana notwithstanding, the majority of his work has been in the U.S. But he’s also enjoyed being able to shoot photos in Japan, Europe and China, to name a few.

“A number of years ago, my son was the China correspondent for Fortune magazine, and I traveled to Beijing to visit with him and his wife,” he said. 

“I also did a photo story on a ‘bee trucker’ for a magazine. That was fascinating. Several times a week, this truck driver crisscrosses the states hauling bees — twenty-four million bees at a time. The summer day I worked with him, he drove from Wisconsin to Michigan's thumb where a crew waited to unload his precious cargo of pollinators.”

Cendrowski has concentrated on mostly corporate work for most of the later years of his career, but it is editorial assignments like the bee assignment that he enjoys the most.

“I’ve also been able to use my writing talents for the past dozen years to do combination writing/photo assignments for a Swedish publisher and its industrial clients,” he said. “I’ve also traveled to a number of cities in the U.S. for these assignments, including for a story on Oshkosh Corporation.”

He said some of the most awe-inspiring assignments he’s done over the years have been for hospitals.

“I photographed a quintuplet birth some years ago at the University of Michigan Hospital. And I’ve been in operating rooms for various operations, including open-heart surgery for a story I shot and wrote.”

‘Scary and brilliant’

Well-traveled and well-busy for sure, but Cendrowski still finds time to riff on some special memories of his time at Harper Woods Notre Dame.

“One of my favorite teachers at Notre Dame was Fr. DesRosiers,” he said. “I took Latin from him and he was one of the funniest and most animated teachers I’ve ever had. He later officiated at my brother Mark’s wedding. Geez, that was about 30 years ago!”

He recalls Conrad Vachon as “scary and brilliant” and said Ed Cackowski in the chemistry lab also holds special memories. 

“I think it was Br. George Szal [now Fr. George Szal, s.m.] who took our class to a symphony in Detroit to give us heathens a bit of culture. Plus, certain other memories remain very vivid, like our class trip to Washington, D.C., and the many hockey games I played for the Irish.” 

Additional work from Cendrowski's portfolio along with contact information can be found at www.cendrowski.com.

For information on enrollment and registration at Notre Dame, an independent, Catholic, International Baccalaureate school, please visit the admissions section of our website here.

Comments or questions? mkelly@ndpma.org

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About Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy
Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy is a private, Catholic, independent, coeducational day school located in Oakland County. Notre Dame Preparatory School enrolls students in grades nine through twelve and has been named one of the nation's best 50 Catholic high schools (Acton Institute) four times since 2005. Notre Dame's middle and lower schools enroll students in pre-kindergarten through grade eight. All three schools are International Baccalaureate "World Schools." NDPMA is conducted by the Marist Fathers and Brothers and is accredited by the Independent Schools Association of the Central States and the National Association of Independent Schools. For more on Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy, visit the school’s home page at www.ndpma.org.