Michael Haritan is a professional commercial photographer with a Certified and Craftsman Rating with the Professional Photographers of America. This Pittsburgh-based, award-winning photographer covers a full spectrum of services - with projects that include advertising, corporate, architecture, construction, real estate, industrial, healthcare, editorial, public relations, education, travel, sports, and entertainment. Michael Haritan is the recipient of numerous local, state, national and international awards for his outstanding photography including the 1987 first place award for his photo of a downtown Pittsburgh construction project, and displayed at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. "Chernobyl - Causes, Cover-Up and Consequences" is Haritan's presentation of the disaster timeline with personal photographs and a video that gives a haunting documentation of the disaster site, a psychiatric institution and orphanage - enlightening audiences with a rare view of not just a disastrous event, but a place and the people who once worked and lived there. His trips to Ukraine in 2016 and 2018 provided research information about the world's worst nuclear accident and has given over forty presentations to audiences across the USA. It also formed the basis for his 2023 book titled: Chernobyl: Aftermath of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster, a photography chronicle and memoir of his two visits including untold stories and interviews from survivors of the Exclusion Zone. Haritan became an Amazon Best Seller Author in just two weeks of the book's release. Earning a Master of Music in Folk Arts degree in 1980, Haritan has produced photo documentaries of folk music and dance cultures, history, architecture and geography of Native Americans, Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey and Ukraine. Throughout his forty-year career, he has continuously taught photography to students and enthusiasts alike at the secondary, college, and adult-education levels. Haritan earned an Associate of Science Degree in Homeland Security in 2013 and as a member, provides photography for the Pennsylvania Urban Search & Rescue Strike Team 1 and the Counterterrorism Task Force - Region 13.
