Reviewers
Please click on a name to read the reviewer's biography:
Brian Clamp, Owner, ClampArt |
Brian Paul Clamp is the owner and director of ClampArt, a gallery in the Chelsea district of New York City specializing in modern and contemporary art with an emphasis on photography. ClampArt mounts 10 to 15 exhibitions per year featuring the work of emerging and mid-career artists. Clamp opened the gallery in 2000 after completing a master of arts degree in critical studies in modern art at Columbia University. For eight years prior to that Clamp served as the director of a gallery on Manhattan’s Upper East Side specializing in late 19th and early 20th century American paintings. Aside from exhibitions at his own gallery space, Clamp has curated numerous photography shows at various venues throughout the United States, and he has reviewed photographers’ portfolios on dozens of panels over the past several years. Clamp is the author of numerous publications on American art to date, and also occasionally contributes written work to various art periodicals. He will review at all levels. |
MaryAnn Camilleri, Founder and Director, Magenta Foundation |
The Magenta Foundation is a 'first of its kind' charitable arts publishing house in Canada that opened its doors in 2004. |
Donna DeCesare, Assistant Professor, University of Texas School of Journalism |
Donna DeCesare is widely known for her groundbreaking photographic reportage on the spread of Los Angeles gangs in Central America. Her photographs of children in Guatemala and Colombia who are former child soldiers, survivors of sexual abuse, or who live with the stigma of HIV helped UNICEF to develop protocols for photographing children at risk. Publications featuring her work include the New York Times Magazine, Life, DoubleTake and Aperture. She is the recipient of an Emmy award, the Dorothea Lange Prize, the Alicia Patterson Fellowship, the Mother Jones International Photo Fund Award, the Soros Independent Project fellowship and most recently a Fulbright Fellowship in Colombia. DeCesare is currently documenting narratives of loss and survival among those who have suffered political violence in Colombia. Images and text from this project published on the Web site Crimes of War won a top award in the National Press Photographers Association Best of Photojournalism contest. Her work has been exhibited in one-woman venues internationally. DeCesare is a tenured associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Journalism, a faculty affiliate with Latin American Studies and an advisory board member for the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas. DeCesare is also on the advisory committee of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at the Columbia University School of Journalism. She will review at all levels. |
Frank DiPerna, The Ruesch Family Professor of Photography, |
Frank DiPerna is currently a professor at the Corcoran College of Art and Design where he has taught for many years. He teaches both traditional darkroom and digital classes. His work is mostly in color and is now digitally based. He is currently working on his pictures from several trips to Italy. He has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, and his work is included in many public collections including the National Museum of American Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He will review at all levels. |
Melissa Farlow, Photographer |
Melissa Farlow is a freelance photographer who has contributed 14 stories to National Geographic magazine. Previously she was a staff photographer at the Pittsburgh Press, the Courier-Journal and the Louisville Times. While working at the Louisville newspapers, she was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of desegregation in the public schools. Farlow worked in three African countries for Women in the Material World, a book comparing women’s roles in different cultures. She photographed in Chile, Peru, and Mexico for a book on the Pan-American Highway and also for a National Geographic book titled Wild Lands of the West. Her images have won multiple awards in the Pictures of the Year International competition and other contests. She received her B.A. degree in journalism from Indiana University and her master’s degree from the University of Missouri where she also taught photojournalism. She has been a faculty member at the Missouri Photo Workshop, the Center for Photographic Studies in Louisville, and the Anderson Ranch of Fine Arts in Aspen, Colorado. She will review at all levels. |
Merry Foresta, Director, Smithsonian Photography Initiative |
Merry A. Foresta has researched and published widely in areas that include art and photographic history. She established the department of photography at the Smithsonian American Art Museum where she organized numerous exhibitions, including Perpetual Motif: The Art of Man Ray; Between Home and Heaven: Contemporary American Landscape Photography; and The Art of the American Daguerreotype. She has served as director of the Smithsonian Photography Initiative since 2001. SPI’s interactive Web site www.photography.si.edu launched in the fall of 2006. She will review at all levels. |
Frank Goodyear, Associate Curator of Photography, National Portrait Gallery, |
Frank H. Goodyear III is the associate curator of photographs at the National Portrait Gallery and an affiliated faculty member in the Department of American Studies at the George Washington University. Goodyear is the author of Red Cloud: Photographs of a Lakota Chief (University of Nebraska Press, 2003); Zaida Ben-Yusuf: New York Portrait Photographer (Merrell Publications, 2008); and Faces of the Frontier: Photographic Portraits from the American West, 1845–1924 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2009). He will review at all levels. |
Andy Grundberg, Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies and Chair of Photography, Corcoran College of Art + Design |
Andy Grundberg is a writer, curator, teacher, and arts consultant who has been involved with photography and art for more than 25 years. As a critic for the New York Times from 1981 to 1991, he covered the rapid ascent of photography within the art world. From 1992 to 1997, he was the director of the Friends of Photography in San Francisco, where he founded the quarterly journal see. Among the major exhibitions he has organized are Photography and Art: Interactions Since 1946 (1987); Points of Entry: Tracing Cultures (1996), Ansel Adams: A Legacy (1997); and In Response to Place: Photographs from the Nature Conservancy’s Last Great Places (2001). His books include Crisis of the Real (1999), Alexey Brodovitch (1989), and Mike and Doug Starn (1990). He is one of the contributors to Aperture’s 2006 book William Christenberry. Grundberg now lives in Washington, D.C., where he is the associate dean of Undergraduate Studies and chair of photography at the Corcoran College of Art and Design. He will review at all levels. |
George Hemphill, Owner, Hemphill Fine Arts |
George Hemphill, a longtime resident of Washington, D.C., describes himself as a gallery owner, dog lover, and liberal thinker. Hemphill has assisted many collectors, both corporate and private, in building meaningful art collections. In 1993, he opened Hemphill Fine Arts, which soon became one of the preeminent venues for the work of emerging artists, as well as contemporary and modern masters. Along with his work as an art dealer and art adviser, Hemphill is a founding member of the board of directors for the District of Columbia Arts Center as well as a founding member of the board of directors of FotoWeek DC. Hemphill currently serves as vice-chair on the board of the Washington Project for the Arts. He edited and published several publications and has hosted a series of lectures, called Art Talks, which showcases conversations with artists, collectors, and curators. He will review at the Professional and Student levels. |
Connie Imboden, Photographer |
Connie Imboden’s photographs are represented in the permanent collections of major museums throughout the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C.; the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris; and the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany. Her work has been exhibited in an extensive range of solo shows in galleries and museums in Europe, South America, and the United States. Her first book of images, Out of Darkness, won the Silver Medal in Switzerland’s Schönste Bucher Aus Aller Welt (Most Beautiful Book in the World) award in 1993. Her fifth book, Reflections, Twenty Five Years of Photographs by Connie Imboden, was published in spring 2009. Imboden’s work has been featured in such periodicals as Focus, Aperture, American Photo, Camera and Darkroom, Photo Review, Black and White, Ag, View Camera, Inked, Vis.A.Vis, and Zoom magazine. Imboden currently teaches photography at the Maryland Institute College of Art and at a wide variety of workshops in the United States and abroad. She will review at all levels. |
Sarah Kennel, Assistant Curator, Department of Photographs, National Gallery of Art |
Sarah Kennel is associate curator of photographs at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. She holds a Ph.D. in art history from the University of California, Berkeley, and specializes in 19th and 20th century European photography. She has just completed a guidebook to photographic processes from the origins of the medium up to digital photography, and has also published essays in the exhibits André Kertész (2005), The Art of the American Snapshot (2008), and In the Forest of Fontainebleu: Painters and Photographers from Corot to Monet (2008). At the National Gallery, she has curated several exhibitions, including Paris in Transition: Photographs from the National Gallery of Art (2006); the photography section of In the Forest of Fontainebleu: Painters and Photographers from Corot to Monet (2008); and In the Darkroom: Photographic Processes before the Digital Age (2009). She will review at all levels. |
Elizabeth Krist, Senior Photo Editor, National Geographic Magazine |
Elizabeth Cheng Krist is currently a senior photo editor for National Geographic magazine. After graduating from Princeton, she worked at Asia and Fortune before coming to National Geographic in 1994. Elizabeth has won a first place in editing from Pictures of the Year and several Communication Arts citations. She has judged competitions for Kodak, Nikon, CPoY, Best of Photojournalism, and the RFK Journalism Awards. She has curated exhibitions in Arlington, Virginia; Washington, D.C.; and Athens, Greece, and has taught at the Santa Fe Workshops. Last year, to her great dismay, she found herself blogging during FotoWeek. She will review at all levels. |
Michael Mazzeo, Owner, Michael Mazzeo Gallery |
Michael Paris Mazzeo is a gallerist, educator, and photographer based in New York City. Since opening its doors in Chelsea in October 2005, Michael Mazzeo Gallery has become one of the premier showcases of rising young talent in the field of photography, having awarded nine artists their first solo exhibitions in New York City and including more than 100 others in group exhibitions. The gallery and artists have been featured in the New York Times, the New Yorker, Art in America, Art on Paper, the Village Voice, and in numerous online publications. The gallery client list is international in scope and consists of museums, foundations, corporations, collectors, and novices. Works by gallery artists have been acquired by institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Princeton Museum and Fidelity Investments, as well as many private collectors. Michael's commitment to photographic education is evidenced by his long and diverse teaching career, having served on the faculty of Parsons School for Design, New Jersey City University, and currently, the International Center of Photography and the School of Visual Arts. He also leads workshops in portfolio development, studio practices, and antiquarian processes. He has juried exhibitions for the Center for Fine Art Photography, the Soho Photo Gallery, and the Perkins Center for the Arts. He will review at the Professional and Student levels. |
Jayme McLellan, Director, Civilian Arts Projects |
Jayme McLellan is the curator, founder, and director of Civilian Art Projects in Washington, D.C. She represents the work of such renowned photographers as Noelle Tan, Ken Ashton, and Kate MacDonnell. Since 1996, she has organized and curated over 100 exhibitions and events to promote art, artists, and ideas of social importance. Civilian is the second business created by McLellan and her first solo venture. In one year, Civilian and artists represented by the gallery have achieved critical success, community support, and international attention. Prior to Civilian, McLellan co-founded and served as co-director of Transformer (2002–2006) while also serving as director of development and interim executive director of Women & Philanthropy (2003–2006). From 1998 to 2001, she was director of development for the District of Columbia Arts Center (DCAC), where she helped to stimulate global exchange programs, creative local events, and rock shows. She will review at all levels. |
Al Miner, Curatorial Assistant, Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution |
Al Miner is an artist, curator, and curatorial assistant at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution. At the Hirshhorn, his projects have included a sculpture garden commission with artist Dan Graham. Independent pursuits include a 2007 writing residency at Maryland Art Place where he co-wrote an exhibition catalogue with critics Eleanor Heartney and Irving Sandler and the 2008 exhibition The Elusive Surrounding at C. Grimaldis Gallery, both in Baltimore. In 2009, he received the American Association for Museums (AAM) Diversity Fellowship and curated the group photography exhibition Domesticated: Men and the Domestic Interior at Transformer in Washington, D.C. As an artist, Miner has exhibited extensively and received awards including the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities Young Artist Program Grant and two Artist’s Fellowship Awards. Miner holds an M.F.A. in painting/mixed media from Queens College, CUNY (2000) and a post-graduate certificate in museum studies from the George Washington University (2006). He will review at all levels. |
Tom Rankin, Associate Professor, Duke University Visual Studies and Director of the Center for Documentary Studies |
Tom Rankin is director of the Center for Documentary Studies and associate professor of the Practice of Art and Documentary Studies at Duke University. A photographer, filmmaker, and folklorist, Rankin is formerly associate professor of Art and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi and chair of the Art Department at Delta State University. He is a graduate of Tufts University (B.A., summa cum laude, American history), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (M.A., folklore), and Georgia State University (M.F.A., photography). A native of Kentucky, his books include Sacred Space: Photographs from the Mississippi Delta (1993), which received the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Photography; Deaf Maggie Lee Sayre: Photographs of a River Life (1995); Faulkner's World: The Photographs of Martin J. Dain (1997); and Local Heroes Changing America: Indivisible (2000). He is the co-director and co-producer of the documentary film Powerhouse for God. His photographs have been collected and published, and included in numerous exhibitions. He is a frequent writer and lecturer on southern art, culture, and the documentary tradition. He will review at all levels. |
Bonni Stutski, Senior Photo Editor, Smithsonian Magazine |
Bonnie Stutski is currently the senior photo editor for Smithsonian magazine, where she conceptualizes, assigns, directs, researches, edits, and selects photography to illustrate Smithsonian articles and photo essays on a variety of national and international topics; subject areas include culture, nature and wildlife, science and technology, travel, art, and history. Her past experience in the fields of photography and publishing spans 30 years and includes photo editing for the National Wildlife Federation, National Geographic, and Time-Life Books, as well as stints as a freelance photographer, photo agent, and documentary film producer. She is a member of NANPA (North America Nature Photography Association), ASPP (American Society of Picture Professionals), and ASMP (American Society of Media Photographers). She will review at the Advanced and Student levels. |
Mary Virginia Swanson, Consultant, MV Swanson & Assoc., Inc. |
Mary Virginia Swanson makes it her goal to help photographers find the strengths in their work and identify appreciative audiences in today’s marketplace, and is considered an expert in the area of marketing and licensing fine art. She is a sought-after portfolio reviewer at events such as Review LA, FotoFest, PhotoNola, and others. Swanson’s lectures and seminars on the subjects of industry awareness and marketing opportunities in the arts have proven to aid countless photographers in moving their careers to the next level. Swanson maintains a popular blog about opportunities for photographers at www.marketingphotos.wordpress.com and she is the author of her self-published title The Business of Photography: Principles and Practices, which is available through her website www.mvswanson.com. She will review at all levels. |
Frank Van Riper, Owner, Goodman/Van Riper Photography |
Frank Van Riper is an award-winning documentary and fine art photographer, journalist, and author whose work has been published internationally. He is in the permanent collections of the National Museum of American Art and the National Portrait Gallery, and the Portland Museum of Art (Portland, Maine). His 1998 book Down East Maine/A World Apart was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and won a silver medal from the Art Director’s Club of Metropolitan Washington. Since 1992, Van Riper has been the photography columnist of the Washington Post. He was formerly a political writer and editor in the Washington bureau of the New York Daily News (White House correspondent, national political correspondent, and Washington bureau news editor). His latest book (done with his wife and partner Judith Goodman) is Serenissima: Venice in Winter. He currently teaches photography at PhotoWorks at Glen Echo Park, Maryland. He will review at the Student and Advanced levels. |
Ricardo Viera, Curator & Director, Lehigh University Art Galleries, Zoellner Arts Center |
Ricardo Viera is a professor of art, and since 1974 has been director/curator of the Lehigh University Art Galleries/Museum Operation, where he has established a visual lab program with the LUAG work/study collection and a nationally recognized collection of Latin American photography and video. Professor Viera teaches courses in museum and curatorial studies; independent topics in the history of photography, public art, and visual thinking strategies; and multimedia/new media workshops. He has been a reviewer and consultant curator for Fotofest since the early 1990s. In October, 2006 he was invited to China as a reviewer for Meeting Place of the first Fotofest, Beijing. He has organized, curated, co-curated, and served as consultant to several exhibitions, including, most recently, “Viajeros: North American Artist/Photographers Images of Cuba,†LUAG 2006, Miami-Dade College, Wolfson campus gallery, Miami as part of the SPE National Conference, 2007; “Latin American Photography 2,†from the LUAG Collection, LUAG 2006; “Hector Mendez Caratini: The Eye of Memory,†El Museo del Barrio, New York City, 2006; “Lies and Dustograms,†Maria Martinez Canas and Kim Brown, Dos Santos Gallery, as part of Fotofest Houston, Texas, 2006; and “Our Journey Our Stories,†Smithsonian Center for Latino Initiatives Traveling Exhibition, 2004–2006. Professor Viera is interested in all kinds of creative endeavors in traditional, digital, and new media. He will review at all levels. |
Deborah Willis, Chair, Department of Photography & Imaging, New York University |
Dr. Deborah Willis is Chair and Professor of Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, where she also has an affiliated appointment with the College of Arts and Sciences, Africana Studies. Named as one of the 100 Most Important People in Photography by American Photography Magazine, she is also a 2005 Guggenheim and Fletcher Fellow, a 2000 MacArthur Fellow, a 1996 Recipient of the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation Award. She is one of the nation's leading historians of African American photography and curators of African American culture. Among Deborah’s notable projects are Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers –1840 to the Present, A Small Nation of People: W.E.B. DuBois and African American Portraits of Progress, The Black Female Body in Photography, Barack Obama: The Historic Campaign in Photographs, and Let Your Motto Be Resistance. Her upcoming book entitled Posing Beauty will be released in October 2009. She will review at all levels. |
Tim Wride, Executive Director, No Strings Foundation |
Tim B. Wride is the founding executive director of the No Strings Foundation, a Los Angeles–based philanthropic nonprofit organization that provides individual artist grants to U.S. photographers. Prior to his position with the foundation, Mr. Wride spent 14 years at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as a curator in the Department of Photographs. As an independent curator, he is actively researching and mounting exhibitions nationally. He is also the founder of The Curatorial Eye, which offers lectures, seminars, workshops, and mentoring to photographers, collectors, and not-for-profit institutions. He will review at all levels. |