Marc Schenker lives in Davis and San Francisco, California. He is married to Heath Schenker and has three daughters; Yael, Phoebe and Hilary. He is a physician and professor at the University of California at Davis School of Medicine where he is in the Department of Public Health Sciences. His university work includes occupational and environmental health, pulmonary disease, and international health research and teaching. His international health work provides him with diverse opportunities for photographing people and cultures around the world although he often focuses his camera on people and places in the United States. He is particularly interested in how people reflect their unique cultures, climate and geography around the world, and how they also show universal themes such as family, work, humor, leisure and personal relationships. Some of these themes in his work include mother-daughter relationships, children playing and relating to adults, and work. His photographs on work are a direct outgrowth of his research on occupational health hazards in the workplace. This is particularly true for his photographs of agricultural workers, an area in which he has published numerous scientific papers.

Some of his photography focuses on commonalities in physical objects across cultures of the world. This is the case for his bicycle photographs, which show the universal bicycle decorated and utilized by people in diverse cultures around the world.