Raphael Warshaw (b.1942, Kingston, NY) first took up a camera while in military service in Vietnam. He attended Philadelphia College of Art while stationed at Valley Forge. Following his discharge he attended Art Center College of Design and SUNY New Paltz graduating with a BA in Art History in 1971. Early in his career in New York he worked in photojournalism, architecture and advertising. He had solo shows in the mid-1970s at Soho Photo Gallery and the Catskill Center for Photography (now CPW).

In 1976 Warshaw became a medical researcher at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine studying workplace exposure and environmental pollution. Moving to USC Keck School of Medicine as the Administrator of the Environmental Sciences Laboratory he supervised medical studies of exposed workers and communities throughout the country, and is an author of over fifty papers in the peer-reviewed medical literature.

After retiring at age 70, he completed an MFA in Photography, at George Mason University graduating in 2015 and found himself drawn to document the intensity, shifts of scale, and the beauty and human-inflicted disruption of the natural world. Since completing his degree his work has appeared in group shows at the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Biggs Museum of American Art, University of Maryland Baltimore County, and university and private galleries throughout the US. His work is held in public and private collections, including the Hickok Cole Collection, D3 Systems Corporate Collection, McNeese State University Permanent Collection and the Biggs Museum of American Art Permanent Collection.