After 4 years, we catch up with our past Photography Person of the Year award-winner, Julia Dean, to see how his career has progressed.

A month after receiving PhotoMedia's 2008 award, Julia Dean and her partner, Jay Adler, along with their dogs, embarked on a year-long trek across America in a motor home — "he the writer, I the photographer, working on a project about contemporary Native American life," she says.

When not traveling, Dean takes several weeks each year to help run the Julia Dean Photo Workshops (JDPW) in Los Angeles and to teach. With her new business partner, Baret Lepejian, Dean recently moved JDPW to a newly remodeled 5,000-square-foot photo center in Hollywood that is twice the size of the old location.

"Not only are we able to offer 160 classes a year and a full-time program, but we now have a large studio, a digital darkroom and a traditional darkroom for people to use," Dean says. "This is an exciting time for us at JDPW. I continue to love teaching after nearly 30 years.… My favorites right now are my street-shooting classes, in L.A. and around the world. My own personal project is to shoot on the streets of Los Angeles, mostly downtown."

While currently Dean is busy shooting new work, she is also in the process of putting together several books of her life's work, with plans for an exhibit in the near future.