Doriyan Coleman (b.1996) is a Cleveland-based Street Photographer, Writer, and Educator. His work has been exhibited by The Cleveland Museum of Art (2026), University Circle (2025-2026), Cleveland Play House (May 2025), and LAND Studio through ongoing acquisitions.

As the TeachArtsOhio Artist-In-Residence (2022-2023) and University Circle’s Artist-In-Residence (2025-2026), he’s taught innovative, insightful photography programs to middle schoolers and community elders alike.

He photographs the streets Cleveland to document the lyrical poetry of human experience. Through subtle gestures, nature's interplays of light, and the built environment, his work explores themes such as selfhood, community, and the sublimity of the ordinary.

Doriyan believes that a street in Cleveland carries the same artistic value as 70’s New York or a Renaissance canvas, and that within each passerby is a world worth witnessing. Oscillating between black-and-white and color imagery, his unscripted approach to shared spaces finds truth in unguarded moments.

He was shaped by the tradition of humanist photographers like Gordon Parks and Dorothea Lange who understood the camera as a moral instrument, and Harlem Renaissance painters like Archibald Motley who captured the social energy of city spaces. Cleveland itself — its textures, its people, and its refusal to be anything other than what it is, has been the incubator of his visual identity.

He photographs because powerful stories reside in the mundane. The transience of everyday motion is often too fleeting to contemplate in real time, but through his candid frames he creates meditations on culture, history, the built environment, and societal relations. His prints, exhibitions, and books are how those moments live on. Through his print practice encompassing books and fine art prints, he creates communal spaces where people gather around shared experience, and works that can be owned, returned to, and passed down with care.

As an Educator, he’s taught at the middle, high school, and community levels, designing programs for Tri-C, University Circle, and Urban Community School. He approaches the classroom as a venue for community-building, social emotional learning, and creative mastery for children and elders alike.

Doriyan firmly believes that through photography and education, we can see each other with greater understanding, and jointly reflect on the most meaningful aspects of our existence.