For twenty-three years Liss was a Time magazine photographer, where, as a licensed pilot, he flew himself to and from assignments across the United States, to the arctic and across the outback of Australia. He has photographed 43 Time covers, the second highest number in the history of Time photographers. Steve received the first of his two Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Journalism Awards for his book No Place for Children: Voices from Juvenile Detention (University of Texas Press) which he wrote and photographed. Reviewing it, the Chicago Tribune called the book, “Photojournalism of the most moral and galvanizing kind.” The Equal Justice Initiative used the photographs to campaign (successfully) to reform laws that allowed for life sentences without parole for minors.
Steve directed and produced 16 and Recovering, a documentary about a public school for students struggling with substance abuse disorder, his second network film, for which he also won the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award.
A respected educator, Liss has held faculty positions at Northwestern University, Columbia College Chicago and Endicott College. He served on the Advisory Board of Columbia University’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse. For his work on Juvenile Justice, he received a Soros Justice Media Fellowship and support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
