2023 Program Guide

ADVANCING THE PHOTOGRAPHIC ARTS

PROGRAM

THE PROJECT LAB SEMINARS

REVIEW SANTA FE PHOTO SYMPOSIUM

THE DEMOCRATIC LENS SERIES

THE DEMOCRATIC LENS is a discussion series supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) that examines how images have shaped America’s collective memory and inspired individuals to participate in civic life.

Through scholar lectures, essays, and interviews, The Democratic Lens will portray photography’s role in propelling civic actions by sharing images and stories about mobilized communities who actively work together towards a more just and democratic society. This discourse will address the historical and contemporary relationship between photography and civic engagement in the U.S. through pivotal moments in history that helped to shape America’s cultural landscape.

To learn more, please visit thedemocraticlens.org. Scholar Interviews can be seen on pages 34-42.

The Democratic Lens has been made possible by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

ABOUT CENTER

Founded in 1994, the not-for-profit organization CENTER , based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, supports socially and environmentally engaged lens-based projects through education, public platforms, funding, and partnerships. Through our advancement of artists and their work, CENTER serves to deepen public understanding of lens-based media’s complex history and ongoing cultural significance. By establishing trans-disciplinary partnerships between artists and justice-driven communities, historians, cultural critics, students, and the art world, we honor our unique role in advancing projects that respect all people, open minds, and engage our shared humanity.

Characterized by a community of gifted and committed lens-based artists, CENTER has proven for the last 29 years that it can help photographers and lens-based artists grow into their full potential. CENTER programs foster insights and actualizations that ripple and impact all involved by providing platforms where the creative impulse can be engaged and challenged.

Santa Fe, New Mexico, is located in the ancestral and unceded traditional territories of the Tewa people, who continue to maintain connections to this land. Thousands of years ago, O’ghe P’oghe – the original Tewa name for Santa Fe, means White Shell, Water Place – was a center for Northern and Southern Tewa communities.

We honor the Tewa and other Indigenous people of the past, present, and future who inhabited, held sacred, and stewarded this land.

Above: ”Summer Thunderstorm, Santa Fe, NM” © Peter Ogilvie Front Cover: “Backstage,” from the series Don’t Be a Square © Margeaux Walter

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Annual Programs

The Project Labs: Seminars

Portfolio Reviewers

Portfolio Walk & Book Fair

Event Schedule

Project Presentations

Blue Earth Photographer Presentations

Blue Earth Fiscally Sponsored Projects

Teaching Award

The Democratic Lens: Lectures

The Democratic Lens: Interviews Discover Santa Fe

“Reflections off Quemado Lake, near 19-year-old Hunter Gossett’s childhood home” © Brandon Kapelow

THE QUESTION OF THE MOMENT: IN THE WORLD OF AI, WHAT IS THE ROLE OF THE PHOTOGRAPHER?

When the French painter Paul Delaroche saw a photograph for the first time, he declared, “From today, painting is dead!” His proclamation, made around 1839, summed up the anxiety that has always greeted emergent technologies. When Photoshop gained popularity at the turn of the 21st century, I observed some photographers distinguishing themselves as purists who were true to the in-camera capture, while others would limit the use of editing tools to those only available in the darkroom (dodging and burning), believing these constraints ensured that the validity of the photograph was still intact.

Is the question of image integrity relevant outside of journalism? Post-production manipulation is worth monitoring and restraint in the precinct of journalism, where truthtelling is still the North Star. In the art realm, on the other hand, post-capture editing is another tool in the toolbox. Although tools can unlock or inspire expression, the hand and creative decisions of the artist are still necessary. One makes several choices even when creating with AI: the subject matter, “the angle, the lighting, the choices in composition— those are elements of originality,” says art law attorney Talia Kosh. CENTER has never found categorizations like digital versus traditional photography, fine art, or documentary particularly useful in determining what makes an award-winning or grant-worthy body of work. What is valued most are the ideas behind the projects.

In his book Beyond Order, clinical psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson describes the role of art in our lives. Artists, he explains, always grapple with something they don’t fully understand. They pursue it even in the face of opposition and rejection. When successful, they move the unknown closer to the conscious, social, and articulated world. The viewer may become informed by and find value in their artworks. There is a transcendent power when an artist reveals something new to the viewer. I don’t know if AI alone can match that, at least not yet. The mind and the creative impetus of photographers are still essential.

In these pages, you will see the choices of the artists who imbue their work with an undeniable humanity that captures the viewers – from the protest images of Mykle Parker to Harvey Castro’s depictions of the impact of natural disasters on marginalized communities. This year we also are pleased to present the social and environmental projects chosen for Blue Earth Fiscal Sponsorship, highlighting some of our time’s most critical human and ecological issues. We invite you to join us for the Project Presentations in September to hear from all the lens-based artists chosen for this year’s awards and grants. Also, read through the interviews and join us in November to hear from scholars in our newest discussion series: The Democratic Lens: Photography & Civic Engagement which examines how photographers have expressed and influenced our notions of activism, democracy, and citizenship.

We thank you for being a part of the CENTER community. We look forward to seeing you and your work in the future as we leverage the lens for personal, social, and environmental evolution.

Laura Wzorek Pressley, July 2023 Executive Director, CENTER

G E T I NVOLV ED

“Being a part of CENTER has not only been the highlight of my year, but one of my career”

– Brandy Trigueros,

CENTER Award Winner

Since our inception in 1994, CENTER has awarded tens of thousands of dollars in direct financial support, products, and services to photographers. New programs and professional development opportunities are added each year. Please join us in making, sharing, and supporting lens-based projects.

“Facial Unrecognition”, from the series The Dadabyte Theatre © Brandy Trigueros

ANNUAL PROGRAMS

AWARDS & GRANTS:

Applications open annually in January for the Project Development Grant, Project Launch Grant, Me&Eve Grant, the CENTER Awards, Excellence in Multimedia Storytelling Award, and the Callanan Excellence in Teaching Award.

BLUE EARTH FISCAL SPONSORSHIP:

CENTER is pleased to take on the next chapter of Blue Earth Alliance’s fiscal sponsorship program. In alignment with the previous Blue Earth guidelines, CENTER is working to support lens-based projects of any geographic scope involving the photographic, multimedia, and motion picture mediums.

REVIEW SANTA FE PHOTO SYMPOSIUM: Up to 1,000 meetings take place with selected photographers who meet one-on-one with key industry leaders; includes a public Portfolio Walk and Photographic Book Fair.

THE PROJECT LABS – MENTORSHIP:

CENTER Alumni are partnered with incoming lensbased artists for advice and pre-review preparation.

THE PROJECT LABS – SEMINARS: : Professional development to gain insights into the latest practices in the field.

THE DEMOCRATIC LENS:

Discussion series with humanities scholars with interviews, essays, and lectures, connecting audiences to the historical and contemporary relationship between photography and civic engagement.

Learn more at VISITCENTER.ORG

PREPARING FOR PORTFOLIO REVIEWS

WHEN: August 24, 2023, at 1– 2:30 pm MT

WHERE: Hosted online through Zoom

HOW: Pre-registration is Required

ADD ON: Individual Portfolio Critique

August 25, 10 am – 3 pm MT

THE

Portfolio Reviews offer opportunities for project distribution and making key contacts for career advancement for photographers. This seminar offers advice on preparing your project or series for portfolio reviews and meetings with curators, editors, publishers, and other industry professionals.

The presenter will discuss the importance of tailoring bodies of work to different types of opportunities from gallery and museum exhibitions, to print publications

add-on portfolio critique session are available to get specific advice on how to refine your project.

AMBER TERRANOVA is an experienced photo director, educator, and visual producer based between New York and New Mexico. She has worked as the Education Director with Magnum Photos and held faculty positions in the BFA department at the School of Visual Arts and at the International Center of Photography.

Amber has extensive marketing, photo directing, commissioning, and consultancy experience for multiple major brands and publications. She has worked as a photo editor at New York, Outside, Photo District News, The New Yorker and People. She has taught workshops in the US, Europe, and Asia and has been a guest lecturer at several institutions. In addition, she has judged a number of international photo competitions.

2023 PROJECT LAB SEMINARS

© Matt Suhre

The Project Labs are made possible by the generous support of the Phillip & Edith Leonian Foundation.

WORKING WITH A CURATOR

WHEN: October 4, 2023, at 1– 2:30 pm MT

WHERE: Hosted online through Zoom

HOW: Pre-registration is required

ADD ON : Individual Portfolio Critique

October 5, 10 am – 3 pm MT

This seminar focuses on effective strategies for engaging with a curator, from honing a statement of purpose, identifying collaborators, and creating effective presentations for exhibition professionals. Learn how to tailor materials to fit the museum and exhibiting institutions.

Working With A Curator will cover what goes into the exhibition proposal, what to expect after your proposal has been accepted, how to fill out a loan form, artist’s

statements, how should the work arrive, what does “ready-to-install” mean, shipping and insurance, how to negotiate an honorarium, among other practical tips and guidelines for preparing for an exhibition.

MARY ANNE REDDING is a visual arts curator and writer. She currently works as the Curator for the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. Redding has more than forty years’ experience working as a curator, archivist, librarian, educator, and arts administrator. She has curated hundreds of exhibitions as well as written and published numerous essays on contemporary art.

© Chris Mortenson

REVIEW SANTA FE REVIEWERS VISITCENTER.ORG/REVIEWERS

Each year CENTER selects portfolio reviewers among a list of industry leaders and publishing experts. Many travel to Santa Fe, NM, to source talent for their galleries, books, online publications, and magazines. Below is a list of the 2023 confirmed reviewers.

EXHIBITING & COLLECTING

NON-PROFIT & COMMERCIAL GALLERIES

n Anne Kelly – Director, photo-eye Gallery

n Hamidah Glasgow – Executive Director & Curator, Center for Fine Art Photography

n Pilar Law – Founder, Edition ONE Gallery

n Anne Massoni – Executive Director, Houston Center for Photography

n Sallie Scheufler – Assistant Director, Richard Levy Gallery

n Jennifer Schlesinger – Owner & Director, Obscura Gallery

n Jackson Siegal – Associate Director, C L AMP Art

n Sasha Wolf – Director, Sasha Wolf Projects

MUSEUMS, CURATORS, OR COLLECTIONS

n Makeda Best – Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs, Oakland Museum

n Kai Caemmerer – Curator of Photography, SFO Museum

n Janet Dees – Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art, The Block Museum of Art

n Crista Dix – Executive Director, Griffin Museum of Photography

n Natasha Egan – Executive Director, Museum of Contemporary Photography

n Dr. Gaëlle Morel – Exhibitions Curator, The Image Centre

n Arpad Kovacs – Assistant Curator, Dept. of Photographs, J. Paul Getty Museum

n Mary Anne Redding – Curator, Turchin Center for the Visual Arts

n Marisa Sage – Director, NMSU Art Museum

n Rebecca Senf – Curator, Center for Creative Photography

n Mary Statzer, Ph. D. – Curator of Prints & Photographs, UNM Art Museum

PUBLISHING / BOOKS

n Joan Brookbank – Literary Agent & Book Publishing Adviser, Brookbank Projects

n Natalie Butterfield – Associate Editor, Art Publishing Group, Chronicle Books

n Kelli Connell – Founding Editor, Skylark Editions

n Mark Alice Durant – Publisher & Editor, Saint Lucy Books

n Mary Goodwin – Publisher, Waltz Books

n Joanna T. Hurley – President, HurleyMedia

n Melanie McWhorter – Owner, Grenade in a Jar

n Shane Rocheleau – Editor, Gnomic Book

n Gordon Stettinius – Owner & Director Candela Books + Gallery

EDITORIAL

n Tim Anderson - Publisher, Shadow & Light Magazine

n Kate Bubacz – Lead Photo Editor, News, The Wall Street Journal

n Gail Fletcher – Photo Editor, The Guardian US

n Stephen Frailey – Founder & Editor, Dear Dave Magazine

n Daniel George – Submission Editor & Contributing Writer, LENSCRATCH

n Julie Hau – Photo Editor, National Geographic

n Lauryn Hill – Photo Editor, WIRED Magazine

n Holly Stuart Hughes – Independent Editor & Grant Writer

n Michael Kirchoff – Editor-in-Chief, Analog Forever Magazine & Catalyst: Interviews

n Bree Lamb – Managing Editor, Fraction Magazine

n Alyssa Ortega Coppleman – Deputy Art Director, Harper’s Magazine, Art Researcher, Oxford American magazine

n Nicole Werbeck – Deputy Director for Visuals & Engagement, NPR

Reviewers will include representatives from the following companies.

“Cresta, 69, holds a photo of herself with her friend Dave Moller, who died by suicide in 2012.”, from the series Somewhere I Belong © Brandon Kapelow

PORTFOLIO WALK & PHOTOGRAPHIC BOOK FAIR

WHEN: Friday, November 17 • 5:30 – 8 pm MT

WHERE: Santa Fe Farmers’ Market Pavilion, 1607 Paseo De Peralta, Santa Fe, NM 87501

HOW: Free and Open to the Public

CENTER provides a platform for the public to view the 2023 Review Santa Fe artist portfolios and a chance to network with the invited photo professionals. T HE PORTFOLIO WALK welcomes esteemed gallerists, curators, editors, and other lens-based art enthusiasts to view a broad range of contemporary and documentary photography encompassing social, environmental, and political issues.

Hundreds of lens-based artists from around the world apply to take part in the Review Santa Fe Photo Symposium. The participants are carefully selected by a new independent jury each year. For one night only, join us for an extraordinary opportunity to view, and take home the compelling projects of nationally and internationally dedicated artists.

We are excited to welcome the public to this special exposition providing further access and insights into the vibrant work of the 2023 Review Santa Fe participants. Preview the Review Santa Fe Listing in the coming months online at reviewsantafelisting.org.

The Portfolio Walk has expanded to include a selection of notable photographic book publishers, indie publications, and art-book enthusiasts, to discover new projects and exchange ideas.

THE PHOTOGRAPHIC BOOK FAIR offers the opportunity to explore the photographic book’s contribution to contemporary lens-based practice, showcasing newly released publications from several publishers that include Axle, Blurb, Candela Books, Grenade in a Jar, HurleyMedia, Skylark Editions, Saint Lucy Books among others. Signed books will be available for purchase.

© Jennifer Davidson

MARK YOUR CALENDAR UPCOMING PUBLIC PROGRAMS

Most programs are free and open to the public, register online at VISITCENTER.ORG.

AUGUST 24 • 1PM – 2:3 0 PM MT

THE PR O J E C T L ABS: S E MI NAR

PR E PA R I NG F OR P O RT FO L IO R E VI E WS

S E PT E MBE R 13 – 15 • 12PM – 2PM MT

PR O J E C T PRESE N TAT I ONS (ON L IN E )

S E PT E MBE R 21 • 12PM – 2PM MT

B L U E E A R TH PANEL DISCUSSION (ON L IN E )

S E PT E MBE R 22 • 12PM – 2PM MT

PROJECT PRESENTATIONS (ONLINE)

OCTO BE R 4 • 1PM – 2:30 PM MT

THE PR O J E C T L ABS: S E MI NAR

WOR K I NG W I T H A C U R AT OR

N O V E M BE R 17 • 5:30PM – 8PM MT

P O RT FO L IO WA L K & BOOK F A IR

SF Farmers Market Pavilion

NOVEMBER 19 • 10:30AM – 1:30PM MT

THE DEMOCRATIC LENS

SCHOLAR LECTURES

NM History Museum and Online

Visit VISITCENTER.ORG/SCHEDULE

PROJECT PRESENTATIONS

2023 AWARD & GRANT RECIPIENTS

CENTER highlights excellence and innovative contributions to the field each year with annual Awards and Project Grants.

The selected lens-based artists receive financial support, publishing and exhibiting opportunities made possible by LENSCRATCH, Catalyst: Interviews, and Analog Forever Magazine and more. Recipients are chosen by a new blind independent jury each year.

MODERATOR: HOLLY STUART HUGHES

Independent Editor, Writer & Grant Consultant; Former Editor-in-Chief

Holly Stuart Hughes is an independent editor, writer, and grant consultant. The former editor-in-chief of PDN (Photo District News), she has organized panels and lectured on artists’ rights and the business of photography around the U.S., and served as a portfolio reviewer at several photo festivals.

A graduate of Yale, she has written on photography and media for Time.com, The Telegraph, Multichannel News, Taschen Books, American Photographic Artists, Magnum Photos, Carlton Publishing, and Blouin ArtInfo Media.

DON’T BE A SQUARE by Margeaux Walter margeauxwalter.com

STATEMENT: I am exploring ways to depict a disconnection with the landscape in reference to climate change denial through staged site-specific photography. Thinking about the notion of invisibility in the age of heightened surveillance I have been conceptualizing works centered around how invisibility and denial feed into representations of climate change. In this series, Don’t Be a Square, I am staging site-specific interventions in the landscape that when seen through a camera lens disrupt the landscape much like a glitch in the image. I see the Anthropocene age as a glitch in

time; it is so short in the greater timeline of life, and yet has caused so much havoc. In my performative photographs, this glitch can be seen as a pixel, a cubicle, or a portal, yet there is a glimpse of humanity that is both camouflaged into the land and completely disconnected from it. I use my own body and sets I build in dialogue with the landscape to create these images. In doing so, I experience a deep connection with the land and simultaneously a disconnect. I see an inherent cultural disassociation with the environment as directly linked to climate change, and this is what I hope to highlight through these images.

Above: “Backstage,” from the series Don’t Be a Square © Margeaux Walter Opposite: “Fade” © Margeaux Walter

ENVIRONMENTAL AWARD | Juror Quentin Nardi, Smithsonian magazine

PROJECT

DEVELOPMENT GRANT | Juror Gail Fletcher, The Guardian US ONLINE PROJECT PRESENTATION, SEPTEMBER 13, 2023, 1PM MT/3PM ET

SOMEWHERE I BELONG by Brandon Kapelow brandonkapelow.com

STATEMENT: My first exposure to suicide came at age 8, when my father made the first of several attempts to end his life. His fatal attempt came five years later, and I’ve been invested in the issue ever since. Growing up in Wyoming, I learned that suicide was an inescapable part of life in the American West. A number of subsequent suicides and attempts among my closest friends and family forced me to question why these tragedies were so commonplace in my beloved corner of the world.

Suicide is an epidemic that is geographically-linked and at its deadliest in the West, with all of the most severely impacted states (Wyoming, Alaska, Colorado, Montana, and New Mexico) lying across the 100th meridian. These are the same Western states in which I grew up - the places that my family still call home - and I want to produce work that examines the relationship be-

tween these acts of self-violence and the environments in which they occur. How does the land and its history influence the psychology of its occupants? How do cultural themes inspired by Manifest Destiny and Rugged Individualism continue to influence the mental health crisis ravaging the West?

Somewhere I Belong is an ongoing survey of the American West that seeks to explore these questions through the images and stories of the individuals most impacted by the suicide epidemic - loss survivors, attempt survivors, and their immediate families. The project’s first chapter was published in TIME and focused on Catron County, New Mexico, which had the highest suicide rate of any county in the contiguous U.S. during the decade between 2010-2020.

Social connection and its absence lie at the heart of this issue. By creating space for survivors to tell their stories, this project seeks to foster opportunities for hope and connection through shared experiences.

“In 1994, the Catron county commission voted unanimously to pass a nonbinding resolution stating that every household should possess a firearm and ammunition for the purposes of home defense.” © Brandon Kapelow

EXCELLENCE IN MULTIMEDIA STORYTELLING AWARD | Juror

ONLINE PROJECT PRESENTATION, SEPTEMBER 14, 2023,

LOS OLVIDADOS by Harvey Castro harveycastro.com

STATEMENT: On November 5th, 2020, a landslide triggered by six days and nights of constant rain brought on by Hurricane Eta buried the village of Queja in San Cristobal Verapaz, Guatemala, along with an estimated 58 people. Within a few days, the municipality’s mayor, Ovidio Choc Pop, declared the area a “campo santo,” an uninhabitable graveyard ending all rescue efforts and recovering only eight bodies.

Guatemala’s poor infrastructure significantly impacts the highlands, home to farming and indigenous communities. When natural disasters occur, they destroy houses and roads and uproot the crops that provide food and income for these communities. Those left with nothing often migrate North to the US, chasing “The American Dream,” further risking their lives. The US does not have a policy recognizing climate refugees, making their situation even more precarious.

Sandra Stevenson, The Washington Post

12PM MT/2PM ET

The 2020 hurricanes, Eta and Iota, had the most impact on Central America, affecting approximately 7.5 million people and forcing Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala to declare states of emergency. I saw parallels to my experience documenting the stories of families recovering from the aftermath of Hurricanes Irma and Maria in Puerto Rico nine months after landfall in June 2018. According to the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, 135,000 people relocated to the states within six months post-Maria.

These stories are a powerful reminder of marginalized communities’ ongoing struggle in the wake of natural disasters. Their plight highlights how a lack of equity and representation leaves them without effective agency, struggling to survive and rebuild. It is essential to remember that natural disasters have a lasting impact, and we must provide support to ensure that communities can recover and thrive.

“Untitled,” from the series Los Olvidados © Harvey Castro

ONLINE PROJECT PRESENTATION, SEPTEMBER 14, 2023, 1PM MT/3PM ET

HIDDEN WATERS, ARID LAND SPRINGS IN THE AMERICAN WEST by Bremner Benedict bremner-benedict.com

STATEMENT: Since prehistoric times springs have been key to humanity’s survival. Unfortunately, arid and semiarid land springs, and their supporting aquifers in North America are endangered and disappearing at a rate that continues to increase as the water crisis in the West prevails across lands that are the driest they have been in 1,200 years. Being an artist who is passionate about the water crisis and water scarcity in the West, I am drawn to their story as unseen yet essential details whose importance is misunderstood.

Living on the Colorado Plateau I was struck by the contrast between spring-fed oases and their parched surroundings. I noticed how a landscape of drought and aquifer overuse can drain color out of the environment. The toned colors of Maynard Dixon’s Western landscape paintings provided my inspiration to use color to imply

the vulnerability and precarious future of dry land springs. This series is an intersection of art and ecology where I interpret scientific data visually and viscerally to humanize its complexity, while at the same time addressing a wider view of climate change and its impacts on dry land springs by making them feel accessible and personal in order to encourage engagement in their stewardship.

Currently, there is a lack of public information on the importance of these waters and the need for their protection; conservation is inconsistent at best. Springs continue to hold vital clues to the health and longevity of the underground aquifers we depend on, and the loss of these significant ecosystems will continue to threaten our ability to live in dry places. If we want any chance to combat the climate crisis, then the importance of recording these last few ecological sites before they are gone, and capitalizing on these opportunities to raise awareness, cannot be understated. The time is now.

PROJECT LAUNCH GRANT | Juror Anne Kelly, photo-eye Gallery

“Abandoned Cattle Watering Trough with Earth Crack on Hole-in-the-Wall Mormon Trail, Liston Seep, Colorado Plateau, UT“ © Bremner Benedict

MAÍZ by Elizabeth Z. Pineda instagram.com/elizabethzpineda_fotografia

STATEMENT: Hoja de maíz, hoja, hoja de papel. What does someone’s culture, heritage, and identity say about a person?

This work began after a recent experience when my personal documents were deemed invalid because they held my married name and not my given name when I was first applying for a passport. I would need a picture ID of me as a child to prove my name and my identity. I was deeply hurt, in shock, and angered. It felt like erasure.

I began thinking about the validity of documents. The weight that piece of paper has, that “papers” have. And of the fact that they are simply paper.

I use corn husks to re-create my papers on something I valued–corn. At the beginning, I knew I would make cyanotypes of my birth certificate and marriage license on the husks–and give them the validity that was taken

away from them. Shortly thereafter I realized that the experience made me question my roots and the idea of home. What home is and who has a right to dictate what home is and who has a right to it. And with that, cultural identity. So, I thought about what being home means to me. Being home is ultimately my mother and her cooking.

I began making prints of specific, traditional herbs my mother uses in her cooking. To me they are her and her story, her childhood, how she learned and her stories about cooking with them. That is home. It also made me aware that as people, no matter where one is from, no matter where one is, the mere thought of our homeland food–its aroma, its taste, will immediately transport one home. This is the heart and intent of this work. It gave me the validity I’d lost. It gave me the permission to feel whole. It made me work–hard.

But, I believe, it also gives others a voice. One, through a humble corn husk.

“Licensia Valida, Marriage License, cyanotype on corn husk,” © Elizabeth Z. Pineda

ONLINE PROJECT PRESENTATION, SEPTEMBER 22, 2023, 12PM MT/2PM ET

RAGE 4 RIGHTS

by Mykle Parker mykleparkerphotography.com

STATEMENT: Rage 4 Rights is an ongoing series documenting the controversial group Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights, and its dedication to the fight for equality and access to free/ safe legal abortions available to all women in the United States through daring, nonviolent, disruptive protest that illuminate that rage women are feeling after Roe v. Wade was overturned.

I bear witness to this movement as a feminist heeding the call to document the continued fight for women, non-binary, and trans rights. The images I see coming out of the current abortion movement are predominantly shot by men; solid work but not reflective of the rage we are feeling. As a woman I have bled for decades, almost died in childbirth, and been told that I could not have a hysterectomy, regardless of the excruciating pain and bleeding I was experiencing, because I was of “childbearing age”. My experience as a woman is not un-

usual. My ability to comfortably discuss taboo and stigmatized subjects without shame, is.

My goal for this project is to document the movement and amplify voices typically underrepresented, such as women, non-binary, and trans. Often, the conversation of women’s health is compartmentalized by stigmas and taboos. Instead of our society having a clear concise understanding to the physical trauma women experience with their bodies, its significance has been trivialized to a romanticized picture of happy women excited to have babies… at any cost, including our own death. The reality is far from the truth.

This series aims to provide a safe space for those who feel alone at the loss of our rights. As I connect and collaborate with others, our voice strengthens, and address the real question of “why are women not trusted to make all decisions for their own bodies... As men have always done for themselves.”

“Untitled,” from the series Rage 4 Rights

© Mykle Parker

ME&EVE GRANT | Juror Lucy Lippard, Writer, Art Critic, Activist, & Curator

SOCIAL AWARD | Juror Nakyung Han, The New York Times ONLINE PROJECT PRESENTATION, SEPTEMBER 22, 2023, 1PM

BLAZER by Rocky McCorkle rockyfilms.com

STATEMENT: My art practice could be seen as pure cinema—a fusion of the photographer, the filmmaker, and the scriptwriter. Blazer is a cinéroman, which is defined as a film-novel, containing only still imagery and original musical score.

800 still frames belong fully to the genre of fiction, with one frame being inspired by a true event. The plot is inspired by the true story of an amateur photographer who was shot dead as he took a picture of his family in 2011 that freeze-framed his killer and killer’s accomplice in the act, synchronously creating a once-in-a-lifetime photo (No. 715). The film recontextualizes events that led to and proceeded his unbelievable photograph.

The cinéroman had a bafflingly huge scope and was daunting to materialize. Led by actor Justin King, a cast of six actors and I shot more than 12,000 high resolution

MT/3PM ET

images chronologically over two days to create this volume of work. Before then, the pandemic had turned this project to concrete.

Through an array of characters, locations, and backstories within the story, the film chronicles the narrator’s first pandemic, the degradation of political discourse in the US, and criticizes the sickening increase of gun-violence and gun-related deaths of Black Americans. In response to the permanent trauma of watching death on camera, the narrator searches for answers to what life looks like after a death, nihilistically contemplates the purpose, if any, of life, and tries to capture the words for an event that words can’t capture.

The film seems to simply be about concretizing life, a personal means of avoiding death. Spectators of this film, or any film for that matter, are privileged to see what Ray can’t after it abruptly ends.

“No. 715,” from the series Blazer © Rocky McCorkle

N E W • BLUE E ARTH FISCAL SPONSORSHIP

CENTER is pleased to add the Blue Earth Fiscal Sponsorship to our services for photographers and filmmakers. Once each year, we will accept project proposals allowing photographers to seek grants and tax-deductible donations.

CENTER sponsors documentary projects that educate the public about critical environmental and social issues and is primarily interested in work that is educational in nature. We welcome proposals of any geographic scope involving the photographic and motion picture mediums.

SPONSORSHIP PACKAGE

Includes a 1-year contract, Review Santa Fe Admission, Professional Development Seminars, Publication in LENSCRATCH , Project Presentation and more.

ONGOING BLUE EARTH SPONSORED PROJECTS

DANIEL BELTRÁ • Our Warming World danielbeltra.com

GREG CONSTANTINE • Nowhere People nowherepeople.org

KATHERINE JACK • Palawan Seas palawanseas.com

2023 BLUE EARTH FISCALLY SPONSORED PROJECTS

SOFÍA JA RAMILLO • El Corazón de Los Andes visitcenter.org/elcorazon

JÚLIA PONTÉS • env-IRON-ment visitcenter.org/environment

MATILDE SIMAS • Woman Rising: Surviving Human Trafficking visitcenter.org/womanrising

JOIN US ONLINE FOR THE BLUE EARTH PANEL DISCUSSION ON SEPTEMBER 21, 12PM MT/2PM ET

LEARN MORE AND SUPPORT THE PROJECTS ONLINE VISITCENTER.ORG/BLUE-EARTH-SPONSORSHIP

Opposite: A ship drifts amidst a heavy band of oil spilled in the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead, May, 2010 © Daniel Beltrá

OUR WARMING WORLD BY DANIEL BELTRÁ danielbeltra.com

STATEMENT: Our Warming World asks us to consider the landscape as a place we have altered, all while striving to coexist within the natural world. Rather than merely recording the changes in the environment, this body of work seeks to enhance our awareness of the intersection of Nature’s power and fragility, asking us to reconsider our view of the planet and how we inhabit it.

The photographs show the vast scale of transformation our world is under from human-made stresses. The unique perspective of aerial photography helps emphasize that the Earth and its resources are finite. By bringing images from remote locations where human and business interests and nature are at odds, the work aims to instill a deeper appreciation for nature and an understanding of the precarious balance our lifestyle has placed on the planet.

“Pinnacle iceberg in the Southern Ocean”, February, 2007, from the series Our Warming World © Daniel Beltrá.

2023 BLUE EARTH FISCALLY SPONSORED PROJECTS

EL CORAZÓN DE LOS ANDES BY SOFÍA JARAMILLO

sofiajaramillophoto.com

• Donate at: visitcenter.org/elcorazon

STATEMENT: Above 12,500 feet in the Andes mountains lies the páramo, one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth and sadly, one of the most threatened. Colombia is home to over half the world’s páramos, which act as a water catch net and are the primary freshwater source for millions including residents of Bogotá and Medellín. Climate change-induced warmer temperatures, deforestation, encroaching agriculture, mining, and wildfires all threaten this ecosystem, but a diverse group of communities in Colombia are taking action to protect it. As a Colombian American, I feel this overlooked story of protection and hope urgently needs to be told.

The páramos and their uniquely adapted plants not only absorb glacial melt but capture water from the clouds and slowly release it into streams and aquifers below. University of the Andes Bogota professor Santiago Madriñán and co-author of a recent study about the vulnerability of the páramo says, “There is no time or space to adapt to

present trends of rising temperatures for many of the páramo plant species, including the Espeletias,” a key plant species otherwise known as frailejones or big friars, nicknamed for their semblance to tall men in brown robes. The páramos are not only home to a variety of plant life, but also dozens of endemic and threatened animals such as the Andean condor and the anteojos bear.

While this critical watershed provides freshwater to over 10 million people living in Bogotá and Medellín, protecting the Colombian páramo has an even broader impact. Páramos across the Andes provide drinking water to an estimated 40 million people and are home to 5,000 species — 3,000 of which live nowhere else on Earth.

The páramos of Latin America rarely garner large amounts of coverage, especially internationally, compared to connected ecosystems like glaciers. Publishing this solutions-oriented story will have an immense impact by filling a void in international coverage, and inspiring people beyond Colombia to care about the páramos.

“Alex, Emilé, and Lucas pass the remains of a mudslide on a road outside of Manizales.” © Sofía Jaramillo

ENV-IRON-MENT BY JÚLIA PONTÉS juliapontes.com • Donate at: visitcenter.org/environment

STATEMENT: env-IRON-ment is a documentation project that uses photography, video, sound, archival material, maps, and satellite imagery to research American locations that lived the iron industry dream, its bonanzas, and decays. The project reflects the environment between us from a particular standpoint, the iron (and steel) industry, and its residues. Is the US decaying mineral industry a preamble of what will happen in emerging countries? This project aims to reflect on our relationship with the landscape, the environment, and nature by bringing the presence and notion of geological time. It aims to raise awareness of the mining industry’s harmful

social and environmental effects and help place it on the climate change agenda.

I am originally from the Iron Quadrangle in Brazil, one of the world’s largest mineral deposits that struggles with the social and environmental consequences of limitless tricentennial mineral exploration. For the past 8 years, I have dedicated myself to helping to shed light on Brazil’s ecological and human rights violations committed by large-scale mining companies.

env-IRON-ment reflects the environment between us from a particular standpoint, the iron (and steel) industry and its residues. Is the US decaying mineral industry a preamble of what will happen in emerging countries like Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Nigeria, Rwanda, etc.?

Above: “Mineral Veins | Transitory Landscapes #70 Dry Season, 2016 Itabirito, Minas Gerais, Brazil. Vale Mina do Pico”, © Júlia Pontés Opposite: “Human trafficking survivor, Cary Stuart reveals a feather tattoo on your left wrist, she says, it’s a tattoo that covers up another tattoo her trafficker forced her to have with his name.” © Matilde Simas

WOMAN RISING: SURVIVING HUMAN TRAFFICKING BY MATILDE SIMAS ONLINE PROJECT PRESENTATION, SEPTEMBER 15, 2023, 1PM MT/3PM ET matildesimas.com

• Donate at: visitcenter.org/womanrising

STATEMENT: At the core of this work resides the belief that visual storytelling has the power to change the world. Woman Rising: Surviving Human Trafficking is a multimedia and civic engagement project that strives to educate communities on the atrocity of human trafficking and encourage them to support survivors as they heal and rebuild their lives.

“I want to know who I am and live free.”

When reading the above quote, it sounds more like a human right than a life goal, but for Cary Stuart, survivor of sex and human trafficking, it is just that. Living free is something that presented as a distant dream for her not too long ago, but it is one she achieved and now uses to advocate for the freedom of victims such as herself.

The last five years have seen a staggering rise in the number of people trapped in modern slavery throughout the world. Woman Rising gives this monstrous institution a face through Cary’s brave representation of what it means to be a victim and a survivor.

It is a pervasive and powerful stigma that attaches itself to victims of human trafficking for the purpose of being sold for sex — prostitute, whore — but it could not be further from the brutal truth that enshrouds them. Much of society, including a large portion of law enforcement, look at these people as willing participants, people who actively chose and continue choosing this lifestyle while having access to all the freedoms you and I enjoy and take completely for granted. The truth is, twenty-three- year-old Cary had plans to go to college while she stood outside one evening, plans to live her life and achieve her dreams. When a man named Ramie pulled up in an impressive vehicle and offered to fast track her modeling career, to take her to New York immediately and give her access to a vast world awaiting her, she jumped on the seeming opportunity. The time for increased awareness, heightened response, and activism to end the crime that is human trafficking is now, and Woman Rising seeks to spur that activism on.

PALAWAN SEAS BY KATHERINE JACK palawanseas.com

acques Cousteau called Palawan the last refuge a spectacular archipelago of 1,780 islands in the far western Philippines. Isolated between the Sulu Sea and the West Philippine Sea, it lies at the heart of the Coral Triangle, a critically important bioregion with the highest marine biodiversity on our planet. In 1990 it was named a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, a model and a microcosm for figuring out human relationships with the natural world.

The story of the peoples of Palawan is intricately connected to the life of the seas; its coral-fringed islands were among the first in South East Asia to be settled by humans around 50,000 years ago. The indigenous peoples of Palawan have always lived in keeping with the tides and the moon, the monsoon winds and rains. Nature has defined every aspect of their existence, from the practical to the spiritual.

In recent years, the strains of the modern world have taken their toll. Industrial fishing and pollution are destroying ocean ecosystems. Climate change threatens coral reefs with extinction within our lifetime. Palawan is rapidly developing; with just 35,000 inhabitants at the turn of the Twentieth Century, it is now home to over a million people and a growing number of environmental groups working on the conservation and rehabilitation of marine and coastal ecosystems.

Palawan Seas is a long-term photographic project that captures the inter-relationships that have longdefined life in Palawan. It is a unique visual narrative of a place and people on the verge of what may be irreversible change, but also a story of collaborations and connection that seeks to ensure a better future for Palawan and the planet.

Above: “Bolondong, an indigenous Tagbanua man, steps onto his family’s sacred island. Palawan, 2019” © Katherine Jack

Top: “A family returns home from a local fiesta in El Nido.“ Palawan, 2016 © Katherine Jack

Bottom: “A Calamian spear-fisherman dives for giant clams, locally called Taklobo. Giant clams (Tridacna gigas) are listed as vulnerable by the IUCN. In Palawan, it is forbidden for most people to collect them and they cannot be sold in marketplaces. But there is an allowance for indigenous Tagbanua people as they are a traditional food source.” Palawan, 2017 © Katherine Jack

CALLANAN EXCELLENCE IN TEACHING AWARD

Initiated in 1998, the Callanan Excellence in Teaching Award honors a high school, college, or postgraduate teacher’s dedication and commitment to their students and field. Educators in all areas of photographic teaching are eligible – fine art, documentary, history, and criticism. This award recognizes educators who demonstrate a genuine passion for teaching, an ability to excite students to learn, respect students as individuals, and an enduring artistic curiosity.

VIEW THE 2023 NOMINEES RECOGNIZED BY THEIR STUDENTS FOR THEIR EXEMPLARY TEACHING:

n Javier Arcenillas – PIC.A Alcobendas International School PhotoEspaña

n Steven Begleiter – Rocky Mountain College of Art & Design

n Wesley Bernard – SUNY Oneonta

n Muffin Bernstein – Dillard University

n Brittney Cathey-Adams – Portland Community College

n scott b. davis – Medium Festival of Photography

n Dennis Dehart – Washington State University

n Carol Espíndola – LafO

n Hugo Fernandez – LaGuardia Community College, the City University of New York

n James Friedman – Fotowrx Creative Photography Workshops, Ohio State University, Ohio Wesleyan University, & Santa Fe Community College

n Nathan Gentry – Salt Lake City School District

n Jamil Hellu – School of Humanities & Sciences, Stanford

n Cynthia Katz – Visual Arts Department, Concord Academy

n Christopher Kern – College of Architecture, Visual Arts, & Design, California Baptist University

n Eric Kunsman – National Technical Institute for the Deaf, School of Photographic Arts & Sciences, Rochester Institute of Technology

n Jason Langer – The Academy of Art University, Los Angeles Center of Photography, Medium San Diego, Newspace, & Santa Fe Workshops

n Heather Lynn Sparrow – True Kids 1 & Taos Academy

n Thomas Mareteh Bundi – Swahili Motion Picture Company & Africa Digital Media Institute

n Joe Medina – Harvard Westlake School

n Jer Nelsen – South Carolina School of the Arts, Anderson University

n Karumba Ngatia – Africa Digital Media Institute

n Nanci Nigro – Oceanside High School, New York

n Wanjiku Njoroge – Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania

n David Ondrik – Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design, Indiana University

n Ronald Opiyo – African Digital Media Institute

n Birthe Piontek – Emily Carr University of Art & Design

n Johnna Rená Guillory - Marshall High School

n Tiearea “Akua T.J.” Robinson - California State University, Dominguez Hills

n Yevhen Samuchenko – Master Class & Workshop Instructor

n Matthew Schott – Francis Howell School District

n Nzilani Simu – Africa Digital Media Institute

n Christine Lee Smith – Biola University

n J. Sybylla Smith – Concept Aware

n Andrew Spackman – Coventry University

n Ariel Sopu - Eastern Washington University

n Tema Stauffer – East Tennessee State University, School of Art & Design

n Ashley A. Stewart – University of Port Harcourt

n Don Toothaker – Hunt’s Photo & Video

n Hô`ng-Ân Tr ng – University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

CALLANAN EXCELLENCE IN TEACHING AWARD RECIPIENT

We are pleased to announce this year’s Callanan Excellence in Teaching Award recipient, selected by the 2022 winner Uche Okpa-Iroha, Director of the Nlele Institute in Lagos, Nigeria.

will always continue to be an important medium of expression and of engagement in various social, cultural, and political conversations in the 21st century and beyond. This will be the case so long as our positions touch on the emotions and passions that make us human.”

— Uche Okpa-Iroha, Visual Artist, Art & Culture Producer, Art Educator, Independent Curator, Mentor, & Founder/ Director, The Nlele Institute Lagos | Nigeria

NOMINATION QUOTES:

“She is passionate about finding ways to introduce photography to underserved students and make art a part of their daily lives.”

“The realm of vision, to which photography belongs, offers a tremendous amount of passion and emotions to interpret the daily encounters of people, events, and places that we come into contact with. The practice of photography enables us to interact with the cultures in which we live from a variety of viewpoints, including the emic and the etic points of view. But so long as our positions touch on those emotions and passions that make us human or cross the paths of both the “other” and the “self” that interrogate our sanity, photography

“Alanna not only cares about teaching about art and photography, but has also built her syllabi around decolonizing historical narratives through lenses of race, gender, and culture.”

“Perhaps the most selfless part of her teaching style is that she makes these guides and references free so that all educators have access to open these kinds of discussions.”

Image from the Advanced Photo Class at Venice Arts © Jacob Moss, Provided by Alanna Styer

SEGMENT FROM THE JUROR STATEMENT:

2023 RECIPIENT ALANNA STYER

Documentary Artist, Educator, Education Research Fellow, Photographer’s Green Book, & Program Manager of Media Arts Education & Mentoring, Venice Arts, alannastyer.com

DISCUSSION SERIES

Among the many tools for civic engagement, photography stands out as one of the most impactful technologies for amplifying American communities’ diverse and complex voices. Photography has evolved to be an essential device for influencing the history, culture, and future of the national narrative. The discussion series will portray photography’s role in propelling civic actions by sharing powerful images and stories about mobilized communities who actively work together to create a more just and democratic society.

Guided by a multidisciplinary Scholar Advisory Council, The Democratic Lens programs explore historical accounts of Americans who used photography as a tool for reshaping the cultural landscape of the United States. Through the lens of photographic history, the series will explore the democratic process, equity, and citizens’ capacity to influence a nation. We will tell the stories that shaped the country by reviewing the role of photography in American labor rights, the civil rights movement, indigenous representation, among others.

In alignment with NEH Special Initiative’s “A More Perfect Union” theme, scholars will present photographs that connect audiences to the diverse cultures, landscapes, histories, and individuals who collectively shaped the nation. The programs include free and open to the public lectures, interviews, and essays.

S C H O L AR L E C T UR E S

The Democratic Lens discussion series takes place in person in Santa Fe, NM, and will also be available online

NOVEMBER 19 • 10:3 0 AM – 1:3 0 PM MT

FREE AND OPEN TO T HE PUBLIC

Join us online or in person at the New Mexico History Museum

10:3 0 AM – 11:3 0 AM MT

PHOTOGRAPHY, ECOLOGY, DEMOCRACY

Dr. Makeda Best | Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs, Oakland Museum. This talk considers the intertwined dialogues between, and the impact of, Civil Rights photography on American environmental photography of the late twentieth century.

11:30AM – 12:3 0 PM MT

“DEEP INTO WHAT I’M SEEING”: PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE MAKING AND UNMAKING OF BLACK CITIZENSHIP

Dr. Leigh Raiford | Professor of African American Studies, University of California at Berkeley

A look at how photographs in a variety of forms and genres — including surveillance images, documentary photography, personal images, and public art — influences ideas of Black citizenship.

12:30PM – 1:3 0 PM MT

AUDIENCE Q&A SESSION WITH MODERATOR

Holly Stuart Hughes | Independent Editor, Writer, & Grant Consultant Moderator Holly Stuart Hughes will join Dr. Makeda Best and Dr. Leigh Raiford as they take questions from the audience.

Register for the Scholar Lectures online at THEDEMOCRATICLENS.ORG/SCHOLAR-LECTURES

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in the interviews, essays, lectures, programs and website do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

MAKEDA BE S T P H. D Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs, Oakland Museum

Curator, writer, and historian of photography Makeda Best is the Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Oakland Museum. Formerly the Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography at the Harvard Art Museums, her exhibitions at the Harvard Art Crossing Lines, Constricting Home: Displacement and Belonging in Contemporary Art; Winslow Homer: Eyewitness; Time is Now: Photography and Social Change in James Baldwin’s America, and Devour the Land: War and American Landscape Photography Since 1970. With Kevin Moore, she co-curated the 2022 FotoFocus Biennial exhibition, On the Line — Documents of Risk and Faith. Her current exhibition project with the Boston Athenaeum explores the world of the Boston-based African American abolitionist couple Lewis and Harriet Hayden.

Best has contributed to multiple exhibition catalogues, and scholarly publications, most recently for Betye Saar: Heart of a Wanderer and Ruth Asawa: All is Possible. She co-edited Conflict, Identity, and Protest in American Art (2015). She is the author of Elevate the Masses: Alexander Gardner, Photography and Democracy in 19th Century America. Her exhibition catalogue, Devour the Land: War and American Landscape Photography since 1970 (2022) was awarded the Photography Catalogue of the Year Award at the 2022 Paris PhotoAperture PhotoBook Awards. Her current book project examines photography and environmentalism in the 1970s. She holds an MFA in studio photography from CalArts and PhD from the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University. She has been a lecturer at Harvard and Tufts, and served on the faculty of the California College of the Arts and the University of Vermont.

LEIGH RAIFORD PH.D

Professor of African American Studies, University of California, Berkeley

Leigh Raiford, Ph.D., is a Professor of African American Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, where she teaches, researches, writes, and curates about race, gender, justice, and visuality. She is the inaugural director of the Black Studies Collaboratory, a three-year project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Before arriving at UC-Berkeley, she was the Woodrow Wilson Postdoctoral Fellow at Duke University’s John Hope Franklin Center for Interdisciplinary and International Studies. She is the recipient of fellowships and awards from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Ford Foundation, Volkswagen Foundation (Germany), the Mellon Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and the Hellman Family Foundation, and has also been a Fulbright Senior Specialist.

Raiford is the author of Imprisoned in a Luminous Glare: Photography and the African American Freedom Struggle (University of North Carolina Press, 2011). She is co-editor with Heike Raphael-Hernandez of Migrating the Black Body: Visual Culture and the African Diaspora (University of Washington Press, 2017 (and with Renee Romano of The Civil Rights Movement in American Memory (University of Georgia Press, 2006). Her work has appeared in numerous academic journals, as well as popular venues, including Artforum, Aperture, Ms. Magazine, Atlantic.com, and Al-Jazeera.com. In 2019, she co-curated the group shows Plumb Line: Charles White and the Contemporary at the California African American Museum, Los Angeles (with Essence Harden); and About Things Loved: Blackness and Belonging at the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive (with Prof. Lauren Kroiz and the students in the yearlong Mellon Curatorial Seminar).

she has organized panels and lectured on artists’ rights and the business of photography around the U.S., and served as a portfolio reviewer at several photo festivals. A graduate of Yale, she has written on photography and media for Time.com, The Telegraph, Multichannel News, Taschen Books, American Photographic Artists, Magnum Photos, Carlton Publishing, and Blouin ArtInfo Media.

MODERATOR:

HOLLY STUART HUGHES Independent Editor, Writer & Grant Consultant

Holly Stuart Hughes is an independent editor, writer, and grant consultant. The former editor-in-chief of PDN (Photo District News),

HOW CIVIL RIGHTS PHOTOS HAVE BEEN USED AND REMEMBERED

LEIGH RADFORD IN TERVIEWED BY H OLLY

STUART HUGHES IN APRIL 2023 FOR CENTER

HOLLY HUGHES: You wrote, “For many viewers, almost the entirety of the Civil Rights movement is captured in photos of Birmingham in 1963.” But as your book Imprisoned in a Luminous Glare details, the ways that the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) used photography changed a lot. Can you summarize the three phases of SNCC’s evolving strategies for using photos?

LEIGH RADFORD : SNCC forms in 1960, and they bring in the first photographers in 1962. SNCC develops a photo agency, photographers volunteer, they receive different kinds of photographic training from people like Richard Avedon, they have darkrooms set up by independent photojournalist Matt Herron in Atlanta, as well as Mississippi and Alabama. By 1967, SNCC closes the agency, and at the end there was only one person

working in the SNCC darkroom, Julius Lester. In those five years, SNCC’s relationship to photography mirrors changes in SNCC, the evolution of the Civil Rights movement and the Black Power movement, and its relationship to mass media.

In its early years, SNCC is invested in photography as a truth-telling document that can reveal the challenges that face Black folks in the South. As SNCC goes through an internal crisis in 1964 to 1965, they’re rethinking the

Above: “Group of volunteers sing “We Shall Overcome” before beginning journey from Oxford, Ohio, to Mississippi during Freedom Summer. 1964.” © Ted Polumbaum. Courtesy of Freedom Forum.

Opposite Above: “Armed members of the Black Panthers Party stand in the corridor of the Capitol in Sacramento, California, May 2, 1967.” © Walt Zeboski /AP.

”A PHOTOGRAPH IS ALWAYS UNFOLDING, IT’S NEVER THE SAME AS IT IS THE MOMENT THE IMAGE IS TAKEN.”

role of an integrated movement, and they concentrate on support of Black communities. There are fewer protests to photograph. Photographers are starting to explore more with their cameras, they’re doing more photo essays and spending more time in communities.

By 1966, 1967, those photographers are trying to think about photography in the service of Black communities. SNCC starts producing photographs as calendars to put in Black people’s homes. They start making books as literacy and informational tools.

SNCC shifts from reaching the broadest possible audience—specifically a white audience outside the South— to making photographs specifically for Black audiences. The arc of SNCC from 1962 to 1967 is reflected in the visual production of the SNCC photo agency.

HH: So the changes reflect SNCC’s changing goals, and not changes in the national media, or among reporters covering “the race beat”?

LR: That’s true as well. I argue in the book that mass media and the movement are in dialogue with each other. After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the urban uprisings in 1965 and 1966, the national mood towards Civil Rights really sours. There’s a sense that: Well, you got these laws enacted, why are you still protesting?

In the 1960s, there’s an emerging disillusionment with the government, and the truthfulness of institutions. What’s interesting to me about SNCC’s shift from the early 1960s to the late 1960s, and about the Black Panther Party’s use of photography in the late 1960s, is that the Panthers already approached photography with a sense that images are manipulated, that there’s always a frame to the storytelling. For SNCC, it had been very much a social-documentary impulse: If we just give people the information, they’ll be guided to do the right thing. By the latter part of the 1960s, the Black Panther Party, SNCC’s Julius Lester, and others are very clear: Images alone aren’t going to move people if they don’t fundamentally believe in Black humanity. That begs the question: What else can photography help us understand? What do Black people want to see and know about themselves that they have not seen before?

At Right: SNCC Poster. “Singing group at March on Washington, 1963.” Courtesy of Center for the Study of Political Graphics © Danny Lyon/SNCC.

HH: In your essay in Civil Rights in Modern Memory, you quote Angela Davis: “Where cultural representations do not reach out beyond themselves, they will constitute both the beginning and end of political practice.” You add that where cultural representations of the past do not reach beyond themselves, or where they function as surrogates for activism, they’re just nostalgia. Is there something image makers can do to ensure their images “reach beyond themselves”? Or is it on us, the viewers, to reanimate past images and use them to guide future action?

LR: I think we saw this in the summer of 2020. The idea was that if we just put “Black Lives Matter” signs in our window or put more Black faces in public positions, that somehow constitutes change and activism. They were representations for representation’s sake, as opposed to representation for the sake of structural change.

I always say that icons are not born, they’re made. In the repeated circulation of an iconic image or, in this moment, it may be the meme-ification of an image the question becomes: How are we circulating it? What uses

are we making of it? To go back to 2020, a lot of people would circulate the same sort of images without the context to understand them. People sometimes think that activism begins and ends with the circulation of an image.

A photograph is always unfolding, it’s never the same as it is the moment the image is taken. It’s a time- and space- traveling object. It’s always accumulating and shedding meanings, and it has the potential to create new stories. So the work becomes: How do we understand a photograph’s role in building more just futures?

Can the meanings of images by reanimated? I started my book with lynching photographs, because they were the ultimate test. Can you take these horrible photos, that were made to mean the inevitability of white supremacy, and make them mean something else? Could they be re-used in a way that they testify to the inevitability of white supremacy’s demise? Ida B. Wells, the NAACP, and later Mamie Till-Mobley reinvigorated the meaning of those photos. I have to believe we can change the brutalizing meanings assigned to Black life by photography through photography itself.

“Charles Bursey serving children at Black Panther free breakfast program, St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church, Oakland, California.” University of California, Santa Cruz. McHenry Library, Special Collections. © Pirkle Jones, Regents of the University of California.

SO MANY CAMERAS, SO MANY ISSUES

KIM BEIL INTERVIEWED BY H OLLY STUART HUGHES IN MARCH 2023 FOR CENTER

KIM BEIL is an art historian who teaches at Stanford University. Her book, Good Pictures: A History of Popular Photog(Stanford University Press, 2020), tracks 50 stylistic trends in the medium since the 19th century. Much of the research was drawn from vintage howto manuals. She has also written for The New York Times, The Believer, Cabinet, Artforum, Art in Photograph magazines.

”IF YOU LOOK BACK AT EARLY EXAMPLES OF WHAT WE NOW CALL DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY, SAY, JACOB RIIS, WE KNOW THAT HIS PHOTOS WERE POSED, AND THEY WERE POSED IN VERY PARTICULAR WAYS, BUT THEY WERE MEANT TO SHOW A TRUTH.”

“Kodak Creates a Sensation.” Between 1890 and 1900. Library of Congress, Johnston (Frances Benjamin) Collection. © Frances Benjamin Johnston. The advent of the Kodak Number 1 in 1888 made photography accessible to amateurs, who no longer needed a darkroom.

Photographer unknown. Spread from Arthur A. Goldsmith, How to Take Better Pictures (New York, Arco Publishing, 1957)

Chopped-off heads, blur, and light streaks were “the mark of a rank beginner” according to this 1957 guide.

HOLLY HUGHES: You pinpoint the release of the Kodak Number 1 in 1888 as the major shift when amateurs could start making photographs. The Kodak Brownie was released in 1900. You report than in their first year of production, there were 150,000 cameras sold, more than all of the cameras Kodak had sold since the original Kodak’s first decade. What was the cultural or societal impact of all these cameras?

KIM BEIL: One of the most important changes is the notion of privacy the question of who has a right to their own image. When the first Kodak was released in 1888, there were editorials describing all the people on the trains heading to the beach with a Kodak around their necks. Where people previously had a sense they could comport themselves differently at a sports event or tourist destination, suddenly your image could travel without you and without your permission. There was a famous case brought before the courts involving a woman whose image was taken and used to advertise products without her consent. There was a lot of concern about how one should be represented in public, especially for women.

HH: In your book, Good Photographs, you note stylistic choices photographers have made to make their images look artless or authentic. What are some of the techniques photographers have used to make their images read as “honest”?

KB: Framing is the first thing that comes to mind. For more than 100 years, how-to guides had admonished amateurs to always check the corners of the frame, warning photographers to look out for their subjects’ feet and the top of their heads lest they be cut off by the frame.

In the early days of Kodak cameras, that was nearly impossible, because they didn’t have lens-based viewfinders. Even in the early days of candids, first named in 1929, photographers were careful to frame subjects well. Photographs that weren’t framed as they were supposed to be with subjects either centered or carefully placed by the rule of thirds, not cropped in awkward places these would have been considered failures. By appropriating those mistakes as a deliberate style, photographers were suggesting their work was made without much forethought. That translates to creating the impression that work was unplanned and therefore authentic. Starting in the 1960s, you’ve got tilted horizons and people deliberately cropped. You get motion blur and grainy film. Those had all been markers of amateurism.

”SUDDENLY YOUR IMAGE COULD TRAVEL WITHOUT YOU AND WITHOUT YOUR PERMISSION”

Why are we looking for authenticity? Photography doesn’t always promise the truth, and there are certainly different types of truth in different contexts and different time periods. If you look back at early examples of what we now call documentary photography, say, Jacob Riis, we know that his photos were posed, and they were posed in very particular ways, but they were meant to show a truth. One of the National Press Photographers Association’s codes of conduct is that you can’t interfere in a scene. You don’t pose your subject. But that wasn’t considered valid in the earlier days of photography. I think our standards or expectations for what photographs reveal have changed over time.

It’s fascinating to me to realize that many readers of contemporary press photographs don’t know that. It’s incumbent on us as viewers to know what the rules are, so that we know what kinds of images to trust.

HH: You’ve written recently about the inadequacy of camera technology to capture environmental problems, from England’s 19th-century smog to the effects of climate change. What got you interested in this issue?

KB: I live in the San Francisco Bay area, and I’ve often been struck by how the pictures on my phone look uncannily good in certain locations. It always reminds me that iPhone designers live here and conduct research nearby.

On September 9, 2020, the Bay Area suddenly looked different, and the iPhone couldn’t capture it. Wildfires were burning north and south of the city. The smoke was trapped above a layer of clouds and it created a bright orange sky all day. People hadn’t seen anything like it. It was really startling and felt apocalyptic. Of course, people ran outside to take pictures, and the iPhone would correct the sky to make it look either like a sunset or like a regular day. It took some playing around with filters to properly record the sky as a dark, dirty orange, not a bright sunset.

As an historian of photography, I’m interested in what is photographed and how it looks in photographs, because I know that we’ll turn to these photos in the future to aid our arguments or supplement our memories.

So, I had been increasingly thinking about what environmental situations are preserved and archived. In the online archive of California, a quick search reveals that there are thousands more images of floods than drought. Though we have a huge archive on the impact of drought during the Great Depression, still, most of these local California archives have dramatic pictures of floods. Drought is hard to picture. It’s hard to picture the absence of something.

I think writing about photography and climate change came out of having this experience and being unsure about whether or how it’ll be preserved in memory.

“Urias A. McGill, half length portrait.” Circa 1854 –1855. Library of Congress © Augustus Washington

Leslie Ureña’s exhibitions and research focus on migration, transnational art practices, and photography as an agent of social change. Before joining the Minneapolis Institute of Art in 2023, she was curator of photographs at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, where she organized numerous exhibitions of photography and contemporary art. She has also worked in curatorial departments at the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Dallas Museum of Art, among others, and has taught in Washington, D.C., and Taipei, Taiwan. Her writing has appeared in exhibition catalogues and on The Atlantic, artforum.com, caa.reviews, and ART iT. Ureña holds a BA in the history of art from Yale University and an MA and a Ph.D. in art history from Northwestern University, where she wrote her dissertation, “Lewis Hine at Ellis Island: The Photography of Immigration and Race, 1904–1926.” She talked to CENTER about how Hine’s work on child labor and recent immigrants influenced public opinion.

LEWIS HINE’S IMPACT ON LABOR, IMMIGRATION, AND PHOTOJOURNALISM

LESLIE UREÑA INTERVIEWED BY HOLLY STUART HUGHES IN APRIL 2023 FOR CENTER

HOLLY HUGHES: Lewis Hine’s photographs of child laborers are often cited as examples of photographs that swayed public opinion or inspired legislation. How did Hine come to work for the National Child Labor Committee, and what impact did his photographs have?

Lewis Hine became part of a group of progressive reformers in New York when he moved there from Wisconsin in 1901. This circle was trying to bring about change in a number of ways, including lobbying the government, conducting sociological studies, and providing support for people in need.It soon became clear that photography was a good way to document and illustrate things that were happening—things that were hidden and things that were quite visible. I find it fascinating that, even though people were suspicious of cameras, at times Hine was sneaking into factories with his large camera equipment or befriending people who could get him in. He traveled about 50,000 miles across the country taking pictures of factories, their equipment, and the child workers. He asked the kids working there, some as young as 6 years old, to pose with the machines. He also kept extensive notes on what he was seeing. Hine also photographed newsboys, who were selling newspapers on street corners in major cities: tiny boys working out in the cold as people passed by them. His photos helped remind or show people that these child laborers were out there, and everywhere.

He started reproducing his photos on posters and in National Child Labor Committee publications, and for a time, became the committee’s exhibits director. The photos he took eventually made it into outlets that got into the hands of people in government.

The Committee was effective, even if the constitutional amendment they wanted didn’t pass. However, in 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act set standards and protections, and a minimum age for workers. We still hear of examples of child labor, but the FLSA is meant to protect workers.

HH: You’ve written about Hine’s portraits of immigrants as they arrived at Ellis Island in New York City. What inspired him to go to Ellis Island? What made his photos different from newspaper photos and other images of immigrants?

LESLIE UREÑA

Associate Curator of Global Contemporary Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

LU: Frank Manny, superintendent of the Ethical Culture School, hired Hine as a teacher and asked him to take up photography and use photographs to teach natural science and other subjects. The story goes that in 1904 Manny asked Hine to come along with him and photograph immigrants to help humanize the new arrivals to the students. So the project began with a pedagogical idea. Hine continued being drawn to the topic, and he kept going back for several years. He returned in 1926, after the U.S. imposed quotas limiting immigration from certain countries.

Especially in the years of Hine’s first trips to Ellis Island, there were news photos showing masses of people: overviews taken from the viewing balconies at Ellis Island or images of people on the decks of arriving boats. Images often showed the arriving individuals as tiny dots, but rarely got any closer. There is something different about the way that Hine was photographing. There clearly has been some interaction between photographer and sitter to compose the picture. There are frontal photos where there’s very little going on in the background. He had surprising access to be able to photograph people without crowds of people behind them. There are also photos that are less posed, but he was focusing on individuals and small groups, as opposed to hundreds of people all in one space.

In 1939, he included the Ellis Island photographs at the beginning of the portfolio he produced for the Russell Sage Foundation on “social conditions.” The Russell Sage Foundation (RSF) had funded the Pittsburgh Survey, a sociological study for which Hine had provided numerous photographs of steelworkers. The 1939 portfolio came about after many discussions between Hine and the RSF, and it was to serve as didactic materials for philanthropists, reformers, professors, and students at the New York School of Social Work. By putting the Ellis Island work at the start, Hine positioned the newcomers in his portraits as part of his grander view of American labor.

HH: You’ve written that Hine’s captions, which often try to describe the subject’s nationality or ethnicity, were “steeped in the discourses of race” of that period. Can you explain some of the ways Hine’s images were used to portray immigrants?

LU: It’s a complicated period for the Progressive movement. There were dictionaries coming out about how to define people by race. The eugenics movement was active at the time. There were people trying to help new arrivals, but using language that makes you say, “Really? Did you say that?” Their language was often similar to that used by the people who were trying to keep immigrants out.

As much as there’s a humanization that some of Hine’s photos share, some of them ended up in publications that attempted to categorize immigrant groups and described them negatively. Despite their initial intentions, since the sitters within them were immigrants, they were sometimes accompanied by dehumanizing language aligned with the some of the period’s rhetoric.

HH: You note that by the 1930s, major figures in social documentary photography like Berenice Abbott, members of the Photo League, and Roy Stryker at the Farm Security Administration [FSA], were celebrating Hine.

Above: “Czech-Slovak grandmother just arrived at Ellis Island.” © Lewis Hine.

Opposite: ”[Addie Card], anemic little spinner in North Pownal Cotton Mill. See photo No. 1056. Location: Vermont.” © Lewis Hine.

HH: How did they view his photographs?

LU: There’s a veneration of Hine even in his later years when he couldn’t get work. Within his lifetime, he’s considered a figure who established ways of distributing information through photographs. With Roy Stryker it’s complicated, because he doesn’t hire Hine for the FSA, but he cites Hine as someone who’s done what the FSA photographers Stryker is sending into the field are trying to do. Critic Elizabeth McCausland and others were keen to revive Hine’s career by helping him organize his work and raising funds for a retrospective exhibition at the Riverside Museum in 1939. Hine died in a dire financial situation in 1940, but through 1938 and 1939, he’s applying for a Guggenheim grant and other opportunities. He’s trying to work to the very end.

HH: In your writing about Hine, you give equal space to analysis of the images and historical information about the period. Do you do that in your work as a curator, too?

LU: I am a true believer in historical contextualization. I was trained by social art historians and part of my interest in art history is gaining an understanding of an historical period through art. When I research an acquisition, I spend time trying to understand where the

artist is coming from, how the work was made, how it was seen in its time. With contemporary art, there isn’t a long archival record. But if we’re lucky, we can talk to the artist. We create documentation to leave breadcrumbs for future historians, so they can say, “This is what was happening at the time, and this was the artist’s response to that moment.”

I find it helpful to speak to the historical period and to explain the context of the times, acknowledging, but not excusing, the problematic wording. In the case of Hine, we can explain the language that in a certain time period was used to describe people. We can explain the history that led to that, and acknowledge that it’s no longer appropriate. The language won’t be any less cringe-worthy, but we’ll give people the tools to understand why that language was used and why it’s changed.

STEVEN KATZMAN

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image: self-portrait (reaching), 2021

From housing the largest collection of art in New Mexico, to bringing cutting edge contemporary artists to Albuquerque, we are dedicated to art and its power to ignite and connect us.

Curator of Collections & Study Room Initiatives, Angel Jiang, displays artwork from our collection to visiting students. Contact Angel Jiang (ajiang1@unm.edu) to learn more about the UNMAM Collection and to schedule a visit to the Beaumont Newhall Study Room .

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La Fonda on the Plaza Hotel. The Democratic Lens lectures are scheduled to take place, a few blocks away at the New Mexico History Museum.

Santa Fe, New Mexico, known as “The City Different,” is home to a wealth of arts, culture, and history. Originally home to the Tewa people, Santa Fe is one of the longest inhabited cities in the country, and the oldest state capitol. Visitors come to the city to experience the rich culture, and to be immersed in the breathtaking landscapes.

New Mexico’s legacy of photographic excellence began with the medium’s most defining names. Photographs of New Mexico preceded its statehood due to expeditions led by Timothy O’Sullivan, among others, who documented newly opened territories of the West. Art Patron Mabel Dodge Luhan invited visitors, including Paul Strand, Edward Weston, and Alfred Stieglitz’ wife, Georgia O’Keeffe, who eventually made her home in

New Mexico. The University of New Mexico photography program attracted esteemed educators, including historian Beaumont Newhall, and photographers Van Deren Coke and Patrick Nagatani. The University of New Mexico Museum, the New Mexico History Museum’s Palace of the Governors Photo Archives, and the New Mexico Museum of Fine Art all house outstanding photographic collections and host regular exhibitions.

AIRPORT & GROUND TRANSPORTATION

Albuquerque Sunport is the nearest international airport. Santa Fe is located an hour north of Albuquerque. Rental cars and Groome Transportation offers a near hourly airport shuttle service. The City of Santa Fe has a municipal airport located about 14 miles from the La Fonda on the Plaza Hotel. Visit the Santa Fe airport website for transportation options: flysantafe.com.

Photograph © Douglas Merriam

REVIEW SANTA FE LOCATIONS

1 LA FONDA ON THE PLAZA HOTEL • 100 E. San Francisco St. Santa Fe, NM 87501 LAFONDASANTAFE.COM

2 SANTA FE FARMERS’ MARKET PAVILION

• Portfolio Walk + Book Fair

• Nov. 18

• 1607 Paseo De Peralta, Santa Fe, NM 87501

• SANTAFEFARMERSMARKET.COM

3 NEW MEXICO HISTORY MUSEUM

• The Democratic Lens Scholar Lectures • Nov. 19 113 Lincoln Ave, Santa Fe, NM 87501 • NMHISTORYMUSEUM.ORG

THINGS TO DO & SEE AROUND NEW MEXICO

4 ART VAULT • 540 S Guadalupe St, Santa Fe, 87501

• Lust Severs, Guest Curated by Jennifer West May 1, 2023 – August 4, 2023 • ARTVAULT.THOMAFOUNDATION.ORG • 505.428.0681 5 BOSTICK & SULLIVAN • 1541 Center Dr, Santa Fe, 87507 • BOSTICK-SULLIVAN.COM • 505.474.0890

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Review Santa Fe 2022 © Eric Kunsman

THANK YOU

CENTER would like to thank those who make our programs possible: The Gumbo Foundation, the Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation, the Herb Ritts Foundation, the City of Santa Fe Arts & Culture Department, New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, and our special friends and donors.

ADMINISTRATION

Deborah Espinosa, M.A., J.D. • Director of Engagement

Luanna S. Gomez, Ph.D. • Projects Manager

Whitney Wernick • Programs Manager

Laura Wzorek Pressley • Executive Director

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Evan Anderman, Ph.D. • Board President & Photographer

Reid Callanan • Board Treasurer & Director, Santa Fe Workshops

Tony Chirinos • Photographer & Educator

Stuart Cohen • Photographer & Author

Beverly Martin • Educator & Designer

Peter Ogilvie • Photographer

Roland Pabst • Photographer

Kymberly Pinder, Ph.D. • Scholar, Curator & Stavros Niarchos Foundation Dean, Yale School of Art, Yale University

Mary Sloane • Photographer

Dyanna Taylor • Board Secretary & Cinematographer

Will Wilson • Photographer & Educator

BOARD MEMBER EMERITI

Sam Abell • Photographer

Gay Block • Photographer

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Joanna T. Hurley • President, HurleyMedia

ADVISORY COUNCIL

Mary Anne Redding • Curator, Turchin Center for the Visual Arts

Aline Smithson • Photographer, Educator & Founder, Lenscratch

Amber Terranova • Independent Photo Editor and Educator

Santiago Vanegas • Photographer

Partially funded by the City of Santa Fe Arts & Culture Department, 1 % Lodgers Tax, New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

ADVANCING THE PHOTOGRAPHIC ARTS

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2023 PUBLIC PROGRAMS • VISITCENTER.ORG FOR MORE INFO

AUG 24 • PREPARING FOR PORTFOLIO REVIEWS SEMINAR

SEPT 13-15 & 21-22 • PROJECT PRESENTATIONS

OCT 4 • WORKING WITH A CURATOR SEMINAR

NOV 17 • PORTFOLIO WALK & BOOK FAIR

NOV 19 • THE DEMOCRATIC LENS SCHOLAR LECTURES

“Hartford, Conn., newsboys. Boy in middle, Joseph De. Lucco, has been selling for 8 years. Was arrested for stealing papers a while ago.” © Lewis Hine