Tom Finke was born in Dayton, Ohio and completed his M.F.A. at the University of Cincinnati and continued his education by attending photographic workshops at The Zone VI Studios in Vermont, the Maine Photographic Workshops in Rockport, Maine, and enrolled in the PhD program at Arizona State University. He has traveled extensively across the United States, Asia, and the South Pacific.

He began teaching college-level photography in 1979 and currently his classes in photography concentrate on dealing with the aesthetic, technical, historical, and critical analysis of the photographic processes.

His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is held in numerous public, corporate, and private collects both in the United States and abroad.

Much of his work is social documentary in nature, centering on the aspects of who we are and how we present ourselves. In 2015, Sokyusha Publishing in Japan, published two books of his work, one consisting of Social Documentary Images made in the America and the other Social Documentary Images made in Japan. Additionally, he has produced two limited edition hand-made books in association with Bloodroot Press in Ann Arbor, MI, and numerous other bodies of work.