2011 Looking Back and Looking Forward

In memoriam, Riley Smithson Steinway 1998-2011



Looking Back
I think it's important to take stock at the end of each year--to celebrate and be grateful for successes, to understand failures, and to set goals for the future. I feel particularly grateful this year. I was offered wonderful opportunities, got to travel to a variety of photo related events around the US and in China, and most importantly, am very appreciative that I can create work in a community that is incredibly supportive and communicative.

First, I want to thank the galleries and photographers that supported my curatorial efforts with the exhibitions Redefining Hollywood at the Factory Gallery and later at the Analog Salon in Los Angeles, and Summertime Exhibition at the Duncan Miller Projects in Santa Monica.

I am also appreciative for the opportunites to juror exhibitions and competitions: the Center for Fine Art Photography's Dreams Exhibition, the Downtown: Incomplete LA exhibition at the Terrell Moore Gallery, Critical Mass 2011, and the upcoming Imagination exhibition at the A Smith Gallery in Texas and the I Spy:Camera Phone Photography at the Kiernan Gallery in Virginia. I am also thrilled to have attended Photolucida as an artist this year, and Review LA and Filter Photo Festival as a reviewer.

Thank you to the gallerists, directors, and editors for giving me the opportunity to share my work: Crista Dix from Wall Space Gallery, Valerie and Vicenc Boned from Galeria Tagomago, Jennifer Schwartz from the Jennifer Schwartz Gallery, Elizabeth Barragan and Kathleen Mahoney-Cobb from Finch & Ada, Dan Miller from the Duncan Miller Gallery, Jason Landry from The Panoptican Gallery, Daniel Cooney from the Emerging Artist's Auction, The Darkroom Gallery, The Soho Photo Gallery, Ann Jastrab the Rayko Photo Gallery, the Honor Fraser Gallery, Melanie and Michelle Craven from the Tilt Gallery, Elizabeth Houston from Hous Projects, Liz Gordon from The Loft at Liz's, Julia Dean from the Julia Dean Gallery, Amber Terranova from PDN, and more.

Teaching is a big part of my life and I want to extend a huge thank you to my AMAZING students in Los Angeles that I have worked with at the Julia Dean Photo Workshops over the years, and to my students in the virtual world--they continue to enrich my life and I am so proud of their accomplishments. It was a pleasure teaching workshops in Chicago and Colorado this year, and I look forward to my first experience at the Santa Fe Workshops in March, where I am teaching The Big Picture.

And lastly, thank YOU, the wonderful Lenscratch readers who remain curious and excited about looking at all kinds of photography. There are some changes afoot with the blogzine, so keep an eye out.


Some highlights?

It was an amazing year, one of those years where wonderful things happened when I was least expecting them. And I thought I'd have time lots of time to make new work...hmmm!

The cover of PDN and recognition for my workshop teaching...



Having my image on the cover, tickets, posters of the Photo Off Festival in Paris...this image was featured on the sides of buses and on posters around the city...



Traveling to China...



Looking Forward

My continuing goal is to make more time to create work. In order to do that, it means less time down the rabbit hole of Facebook and Twitter and social media outlets.

I want to get a book or two out into the world.

I want to explore more conceptual work and push traditional boundaries a bit.


To close,
I would love to hear from you--things you would like to see on Lenscratch, subjects you would like to see explored, or any ideas you want to pass my way.


I wish you all a very very happy, healthly, prosperous, and productive 2012! Be sure to visit the Favorite Photographs of 2011 Lenscratch Exhibition tomorrow!

Re Runs: Gilda Davidian

This was first posted in 2009...



I've been meaning to write about Los Angeles photographer, Gilda Davidian for sometime. Gilda knows how to take a Portrait (with a capital "P") and her website and flickr pages are full of wonderful imagery of her friends and Armenian family members, taken with a an artist's eye. "(I am) interested in using photography to explore ideas involving home, familial relationships, and the process of forming identity through the act of portraiture."

Gilda graduated from Cal Arts with a BFA in 2006 and soon after helped start the Los Angeles photo collective, From Here to There, which allows fellow Cal Arts graduates to create exhibition possibilites as a group. J. Wesley Brown has an interesting interview about the collective with Gilda on We Can Shoot Too.

Two series are featured below: Portraits and Portrait Studio. In her portrait series, Gilda manages to tell a story within each image, where the setting, the clothing, the color, and the person combine to provide the viewer with significant insights into the sitter.

Images from Portraits










One of my favorite series, Portrait Studio, is a wonderful look at those behind the camera. The fact that these Armenian portrait photographers, mostly from Glendale or Pasadena, spend day after day in small, unassuming studios, working to create memories, has a sad poignancy as they pose next to faded images of by gone days.

Images from Portrait Studio

Re runs: Edmund Clark

This post first ran in 2009...

The Houston Center for Photography recently opened an exhibition titled Prime Years. I was intrigued by this often under-exposed subject, as much of the work showcased in the fine art world spotlights a more youthful population. Curator Fernando Castor R. selected 13 photographers who are/were exploring the many aspects of aging. From the editorial to the personal, the work in Prime Years depicts centenarians, artists, relatives, and other individuals enjoying, enduring, and living their lives beyond the age of 60.


Edmund Clark is a well regarded British photographer with a reputation for "combining strong ideas with an ability to work in sensitive situations and with people on the margins of society." He works as an editorial and a fine art photographer; his book, Still Killing Time, about long term incarceration, was a finalist at the NY Photo Awards and received an honorable mention at the IPA Awards. Edmund's project, Centenarians, is featured at HCP.

Statement for Centenarians: These people were born before television was invented, before cars were mass marketed, before the Titanic was built, before the Russian Revolution or the First World War. They are all over 100 years old and the last of the pre-technological age. For some, Queen Victoria was still on the throne when they were born. A hundred years later the telegram marking their centenary came from her great, great granddaughter.








Another project, titled No Place to Go, takes a look at asylum seekers in Britain that flee persecution in one country only to experience discrimination in another.

Images from No Place to Go

Re Runs: Pieter Hugo

This post first ran in 2009...

Pieter Hugo is a photographer that consistently offers imagery that is startling, mezmerizing, and other worldly. His new series, Nollywood, is no exception. Hugo takes a look at the third largest film industry in the world, but it's very different than world of movie-making we are familiar with. Movies are produced and marketed in a week, using low cost equipment, basic scripts, actors cast the day of the shooting, and improvised locations, with no permits necessary.

Pieter brought together a group of actors and crew of assistants to recreate Nollywood myths and symbols. Shot as if taken on the actual movie sets, the photographs reflect a fictional world where reality is suspended. These surrealistic images are uncomfortabley real, yet unreal, and like a good horror movie, keeps the viewer in suspense.