Steve Davis

Looking at photographers from Review LA....

Steve Davis is a photographer whose images reflect sensitivity and humanity, capture moments just out of view, and tell stories of life on the fringes. They are not headline stories, but quiet, unseen, overlooked stories. Steve won 1st place in the Santa Fe Center for Photography’s Project Competition Award in 2002, and received two Washington Arts Commission/Artist Trust Fellowships. His work has appeared in Harper's, the New York Times Magazine, and is in the collections of the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the George Eastman House, the Tacoma Art Museum and the Musee de la Photographie in Belgium.

The project that he brought to Review LA, was As American Falls, and it captures a community in decline, but not ready to give up hope. I am also featuring portraits from Ranier School, to showcase Steve's ability to capture the disenfranchised with compassion and insight.

As American Falls fades from my life, I find myself vainly attempting to lock it's memory to a position of tenderness and beauty--backdropped by allergy ridden summers and iced over winters; of cleaning steamy french fry furnaces one hour, and frigid potato freezers the next.



Overlooking southeastern Idaho's Snake River--tamed and fattened by a massive dam, illuminated by brilliant sunsets--American Falls seems to be dying a death that is as slow as it is unspectacular. The local businesses of the past are all but gone, devoured by monsters like Walmart--25 miles from town. Agriculture, the primary source of the town's economy has also felt the corporate bite. Family farms that made Idaho known for their "Famous Potatoes" are disappearing in favor of giant farms controlled by international conglomerates. A future coal gasification plant for fertilizer production is seen by many as the town's best hope.



I moved to Idaho with my family when I was ten. (The joke is) none of my family members who chose to stay in Idaho got out alive. The economy, agricultural pollution, the wind and the cold make this town a place not for the weak or faint hearted. In spite of the challenges that face American Falls, people make lots of babies. They go to churches, go to bars, and many, while still young and independent, just go; as did the town's namesake--destroyed by the very dam that irrigates the crops that feed us.

















The Rainier School is a state operated institution for the developmentally disabled, not far from Seattle at the base of beautiful Mount Rainier. The school at the Rainier School disappeared years ago. There are no young people. Many of its residents have lived there for their entire lives. They have been betrayed by their minds, and many cases, their bodies. Most of its residents are now elderly, and this extensive campus (complete with pool, bowling alley, restaurant and its own farm) is now home to only about 370 people, about 20% of its peak capacity.



My objective was to document the final days of a school-turned rest home. In a sense, it is a carefully monitored prison. In another, it is a charming country club. Nowadays, as we avoid the institutionalization of the developmentally disabled, the Rainier School and many similar facilities are the victims of our social progress. These images represent the end of a major public commitment, and the unique culture it created.

Fototazo: photography + microgrants

A big BRAVO to Tom Griggs for creating the new grant program and informative website, Fototazo. This site supports emerging economically disadvantaged photographers from around the globe and brings exposure to their projects and their need to purchase equipment. Fototazo is another example of the photography community stepping up to give back by combining social giving and photography. The grant process aims to serve those already working to build a career in photography whose development is currently limited by the inability to purchase necessary equipment.

This is what Tom writes about his idea:
The idea emerged from teaching here in Colombia. I have some excellent, dedicated students trying to take my classes at the university and move forward in photography with old point-and-shoot cameras. With a little research this has come up as a common issue: photography equipment is expensive, as we all know, and prohibitively so for many.

The site aims to benefit us, the photography community, as well. Supporting the young photographers on Fototazo not only allows them to continue their pursuit in the field, it also deepens the collective voice of contemporary photography by providing images from those who would otherwise be excluded from participating fully in the dialogue of our medium by its costs.



Fototazo also provides in-depth interviews and portfolios of new work by selected contemporary photographers, as well as links to other recommended sites and a helpful photography resource list.

Supporting Fototazo not only allows a young photographer to continue their pursuit in the field, it also deepens the collective voice of contemporary photography by providing images from those who have historically been excluded from participating fully in the dialogue of the medium by its costs.

Donations to the current photographer selected for a microgrant can be made here.
For more information about how to donate used equipment, please send an email to fototazo@gmail.com.
To make a donation to the Fototazo general fund to support its operations, click here.

A page explaining how to apply for a grant can be found here.

Fototazo was founded in 2011 by Tom Griggs, a photographer and educator based in Medellín and Philadelphia.

Laurie Tennent

Looking at photographers from Review LA...

Laurie Tennent's project, Botanicals, showcases large scale scanned images of the natural world. Her stunning reproductions have been exhibited nationally and internationally, recently in a solo show in Paris. She was described as "a photographer who is conscious of the current preoccupations in society, the environment, nature close up and from afar, from the most simplistic and fragile occurrences". Laurie's leave-behind was en exquisite small book of Botanical images, a teaser for her new book of the same title.

Laurie is a wedding, portrait, and fine art photographer from Birmingham, Michigan, and her work has appeared in The Knot, Hour Magazine, Style, Metropolitan Detroit, and Town and Country magazines.

Sherwin Rivera Tibayan

Looking at photographers from Review LA..

You never know who you are going to meet at a portfolio review, and I had the good fortune to meet Sherwin Tibayan who was working as a volunteer for Center, having driven all the way from Oklahoma for the event. Sherwin is a graduate student in photography at the University of Oklahoma. Before entering into a graduate program, he spent two years as a Fulbright English Language Teaching Assistant in Austria and that's where he first encountered photography as a practice of looking.

Sherwin has a number of terrific series and I am featuring two below. His project, Best General View, recently received Honorable Mention by the In Focus Photography Grant and was a finalist in Fotovisura's Spotlight Award for Outstanding Student Photography for his other project "Horror Vacui." I have a feeling that next time I see Sherwin at a review event, it won't be as a volunteer, but as a photographer on the cusp of a wonderful career.

Project Statement: Best General View
I'm interested in the fact that more often than not, when we travel through the American West looking for a personal and unique response to the land, our evidence of the encounter is a picture we already know.



We inherit a tradition of looking, seeing, and perhaps finally knowing a place like Yosemite Valley in the works of famous landscape photographers like Carleton E. Watkins and Ansel Adams. But there were others: the countless unnamed and uncredited photographers who took to the same roads and hiking trails and came back home to give glowing slideshows to families and friends, brochures and full color advertisements showcasing a mountain range and a still lake, even the park services and camera companies that suggested we take our pictures next to signposts that bureaucratically and corporately confirmed a place's surrounding beauty.



"Best General View" is a project that considers both the recorded and irretrievable histories a person steps into when making a photograph in the American West. Using an old screen, found color slides and wall-sized projections, my images are a collaboration of sorts, taken both side-by-side and within the light and landscapes of an anonymous photographer, like a pair of familiar strangers on the same guided tour.













Project Statement: Other Interiors
I asked each of my sitters to lose themselves inside an article of clothing—a t-shirt, a sweater, a hoodie—and each in their own way. The photographic effect was the suggestion of something private, contradictory and unresolved: the extension and containment of an individual self into the world. Each becomes evidence of an action performed in a space between here and there.



The spaces between here and there often serve as points of connection and sites for reflection. In this sense, I’m interested in how the subject and composition of each image serve as prompts for the viewer, an invitation to both what the viewer sees and then the feeling of a space the viewer cannot see but somehow knows.

Charlotte Niel

Looking at photographers from Review LA...

I first met Charlotte Niel at an exhibition at Rayko Photo Gallery in San Francisco some years back and was happy to see her again at the reviews. Charlotte lives in Oakland, CA, still shoots film and when producing black and white images, uses the traditional dark room. She comes to photography having lived for 10 years in the south of France as a chef on a private yacht and traveling all over the globe to exotic and remote locales. Upon her return, she worked in finance for many years before dedicating herself full time to photography. While much of her photographic focus has been on social documentary, in particular looking at globalization and modernization and their impact on cultures in developed and under-developed societies, her new series, Body Options, explores aging, self perception, and ideals of beauty.

Women today are inundated with images of young, thin, perfectly proportioned representations of females who advertisers think we want to look like. Starting as early as teens, we are encouraged to indulge ourselves in expensive beauty and later anti-aging strategies. Skilled surgeons allow us to switch out, like a pair of shoes, new lips or a nose, if we do not like the ones we are wearing today. I began to notice the alarming rate with which my peers and women in general are looking to find perfection and I was curious as to how women felt about aging in a society that keeps growing older closeted. If they had the opportunity, what would they change about themselves?

Better than Botox


Using humor and compassion, I began a project combining idealized concepts of unattainable beauty and everlasting youth, juxtaposed against reality, gravity and the passage of time. Starting with myself as model to express a point of view, the series has expanded to include other women and what they would like to change about themselves. These photographs are a combination of women letting me into a secret part of their lives and then feeling confident enough to share it with the outside world.

Feet Don't Lie


After collaborating with each woman on what the ideal "improvement” might look like, I created from advertisements body overlays, designed to conceal or change perceived imperfections. I then fitted the “improvement” with a life-size overlay, emphasizing the fact that the change always remains separate from the true self. We spent a lot of time laughing, talking, and photographing. It was rare that in one shoot they felt comfortable enough to sit in front of the camera and not be concerned with how they looked or would be perceived. With trust came the fun and the image.

Hands Don't Lie


This project also reflects different options that the media presents in the quest for a “better me.” Publications, plastic surgeons, personal trainers, dermatologists, fashion and cosmetics all contribute to a huge industry devoted to solutions that can guide us on how to look and feel our best, all supported by powerful Madison Avenue, Hollywood and peers. Most recently, in a competitive job market, the desire for beauty and youth is even more compelling.

Cucumber and Avocado on White


It is my belief that the more we are able to see our real selves, the more we will learn to accept those images as the norm -- and not need to change a thing.

Turkey Neck


Who Cares If They Are Real


Blondes Don't Have More Fun


Gone Bad


Hands On


Here Is to You


More and Less


Better Me


The Nose Knows


Tummy Tuck