Anna Goldwater Alexander
Director of Photography, WIRED
San Francisco, CA, United States
wired.com

Anna Goldwater Alexander is the director of photography of WIRED. She's been producing photo shoots and commissioning WIRED photographers for over twenty years. In 2019, she was the recipient of the General Excellence Award for Design and Photography by American Society of Magazine Editors. She was nominated as Photo Editor of the Year by the Lucie Foundation in 2021. Ms. Alexander has also been awarded honors from the Society of Publication Design, American Photography, Art Directors Club and Communication Arts.

Ms. Alexander is interested in all photography genres and platforms. Her lengthy history of commissioning photographers will bring some professional guidance to any special projects or assistance with editing. Ms. Alexander has a BFA in Photography from the University of Arizona, Tempe. She resides in Northern California with her husband, two children, three cats, and Trout the dog.

Anna has a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from the University of Arizona. She resides in the Marin County city of Novato with her husband and two children.

LANGUAGES SPOKEN: English

Peter Barberie
Brodsky Curator of Photographs, Philadelphia Museum of Art
Philadelphia, PA, United States
philamuseum.org

Peter Barberie is the Brodsky Curator of Photographs, Alfred Stieglitz Center, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Since 2008 he has organized more than twenty-five exhibitions, including WILD: Michael Nichols (2017), a survey of Nichols’ photography of the natural world creatively installed with art on similar themes from across the Museum’s collection; Paul Strand: Master of Modern Photography (2014), an in-depth retrospective of Strand’s photography and films that traveled to several European venues; and Zoe Strauss: Ten Years (2012), a mid-career survey of Strauss’s photography and her closely related efforts at public engagement. Most recently he completed a survey exhibition and publication about the photographer David Lebe which opened in February 2019 and received broad critical praise. His publications include Looking at Atget (2005); Dreaming in Black and White: Photography at the Julien Levy Gallery (2006); Zoe Strauss: Ten Years (2012); among others.

Nadine Barth
Director, Barthouse
Berlin, Germany
barthouse.de

Nadine Barth is a curator, editor, and art advisor. With her agency Barthouse, founded in 2006, she cultivates publications, organizes exhibitions and cultural events while working for companies, publishers, galleries, museums, and other institutions. Recent exhibitions curated by Nadine Barth include "Ellen von Unwerth: Devotion – Thirty Years of Photographing Women" at Fotografiska Stockholm, as well as the brand new Fotografiska New York, and "Bling Bling Baby!" for NRW-Forum Dusseldorf and Museum Hilversum, Amsterdam. With her expertise, she has been involved in over 100 art books to date. Recent publications include "Inez & Vinoodh: I See You in Everything" (2019) and "This Place" (2019) featuring works by Wendy Ewald, Stephen Shore, Thomas Struth, and Jeff Wall, among others. Nadine Barth also heads the photography program for the art publisher Hatje Cantz.

Barth is interested in reviewing landscape, cityscape, and documentary photography with a strong visual language. She likes fashion photography when it flirts with art without becoming too commercial. She is not interested in conceptual abstract works, photoshop experiments, videos, and nudes.

She can provide curatorial insight for portfolios and book projects, guidance on the art market, and in the best case scenario, opportunities to take part in exhibitions.

LANGUAGES SPOKEN: German, English

Jacqueline Bates
Photography Director, The California Sunday Magazine
San Francisco, CA, United States
californiasunday.com

Jacqueline Bates is Photography Director of The California Sunday Magazine, which won the National Magazine Award for excellence in photography two years in a row, in 2016 and 2017, and of Pop-Up Magazine. Previously, she was senior photo editor of W Magazine, and worked in the photo departments of ELLE, Interview, and Wired. Bates holds an MFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts, and her work has been exhibited internationally.

LANGUAGES SPOKEN: English

Christopher Blay
Chief Curator, Houston Museum of African American Culture
hmaac.org

Christopher Blay is the Chief Curator of the Houston Museum of African American Culture. The Liberian-born American artist, writer, and curator was the News Editor at Glasstire Magazine from 2019 - 2021 and served as curator for the Art Corridor Galleries at Tarrant County College in Fort Worth for the ten years prior to Glasstire.

Blay’s writing credit includes art criticism, Op Ed essays, and interviews for the Fort Worth Weekly, Glasstire magazine, Nasher Magazine, and Art in America magazine, where he is a contributing writer. Blay has spoken on panels and individually at the Menil Collection, Dallas Museum of Art, the Kimbell Art Museum and the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth. He has also given public lectures at conferences such as the Texas Society of Architects convention in 2014, New Cities, Future Ruins in Dallas in November, 2016, and Texas A&M University in 2021.

Blay has served on jury panels for the Nasher Sculpture Center, Southern Methodist University Meadows Museum's Moss/Chumley award, Big Medium’s Tito’s Prize, as well as numerous University gallery exhibitions including the recent student exhibitions at Texas State University in San Marcos, and the Juried Members exhibition of the South Central Chapter of the Society for Photographic Education in Dallas.

Blay's work was most recently seen at the UT Dallas SP/N gallery and will be the focus of a solo exhibition at the Barry Whistler Gallery in Dallas in the fall of 2022.

Blay is a 2003 Graduate of Texas Christian University with a BFA in Photography with a minor in Art History.

Janice Bond
Cultural Architect, Art Advisor, and Owner, Art Is Bond
Houston, TX, United States
janicebond.com
artisbond.gallery

From Texas to Tokyo, local visual art exhibitions to international music festivals, Janice Bond's forward thinking and high-energy approach has been utilized to develop a myriad of cultural productions and experiences across the globe. Her interest and contributions to the arts stem from a passion for supporting the development of more transformative, equitable, and sustainable creative ecosystems.

The debut of her company Bond Creative Advisors in 2009 began the incalculable journey of supporting and leading collectives of artistic minds and institutions as Chief Curator and Art Advisor. Janice’s insight has also been an integral part of developing multidisciplinary programming and communications strategies for independent artists, municipalities, and brands. She has served as both a member of the Chicago Cultural Plan Advisory Council (2012), and the Navy Pier Arts Working Group (2016). Her signature workshops for independent artists and emerging collectors have been facilitated in countless cities, from the Brooklyn Museum to Malaysia.

In the community, Janice lends her time to multiple organizations and institutions as a gracious advisor, board member, volunteer, and mentor. In 2013, she became the Director of Arts and Culture at IMAN, using art as a foundation and pathway for social justice and restorative healing for both Chicago's Southwest Side and in similar marginalized communities around the world. In 2016, Janice Bond became the Director of Music and Social Programming for The Kimpton Gray Hotel in Chicago, Illinois, followed by the Hotel Van Zandt in Austin, Texas. She was also selected as one of the curators for Chicago’s Year of Public Art (2017). In 2020, she was appointed as the Deputy Director of Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. Most recently, Janice has focused on opening a new contemporary art gallery, Art Is Bond, in Houston's Montrose neighborhood.

Steven Bridges
Associate Curator, Eli & Edythe Broad Art Museum
East Lansing, MI, United States
broadmuseum.msu.edu

Steven L. Bridges is an associate curator at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University. The museum is located in East Lansing, MI, USA, and is one of the pre-eminent university art museums in the country. With its Zaha Hadid-designed building, the museum organizes exhibitions that support innovative research, scholarship, and interdisciplinary learning through the experimental practices of a global roster of artists, focusing on the art of our time, grounded in historical dialogue.

As an associate curator, Bridges works across all mediums, and is particularly interested in works that delve into contemporary social, political, and cultural issues. Experimental and unique photographic practices are also of keen interest. Commerically-driven work of that in advertising and marketing is less so. Future exhibition opportunities as well as potential acquisitions are ways that Bridges helps support the work of artists.

LANGUAGES SPOKEN: English

Ashlyn Davis Burns
Co-Founder, Assembly
Houston, TX, United States
assembly.art

Ashlyn Davis Burns is a writer and independent curator based in Houston, Texas and the co-founder of Assembly, a gallery, agency, creative studio, and art advisory that holistically nurtures artists and their practice, while identifying and cultivating opportunities for collaborations with a global network of creatives in both the fine art and commercial worlds. Burns has worked to support lens-based artists for the past decade through curatorial, editorial, and fundraising initiatives, including most recently as the Executive Director & Curator of Houston Center for Photography (2015-2020). She has written for numerous publications, consulted with artists and publishers on photobooks, and curated exhibitions internationally for a variety of institutions including libraries, universities, and galleries.

She is most interested in seeing projects that create dialogue about our culture and that demonstrate a clear relationship between the form and content of the work. She is interested in talking through these ideas as well as presentation, installation, and publication approaches with artists looking for feedback on the development of a project.

LANGUAGES SPOKEN: English

Shane Lavalette
Founding Director, Assembly
Houston, TX, United States
assembly.art
shanelavalette.com

Shane Lavalette is a photographer and Founding Director of Assembly, a global platform supporting an innovative roster of artists. Previously, Lavalette worked as the Director of the non-profit organization Light Work. He holds a BFA from Tufts University in partnership with The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Lavalette’s photographs have been shown widely, including exhibitions at the High Museum of Art, Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, Aperture Foundation, Montserrat College of Art, The Carpenter Center for Visual Arts at Harvard University, The Center for Photography at Woodstock, Kaunas Gallery, Le Château d’Eau, Fotostiftung Schweiz, Musée de l’Elysée, and Robert Morat Galerie, in addition to being held in private and public collections. Lavalette is the author of four award-winning monographs: One Sun, One Shadow (Lavalette, 2016), Still (Noon) (Edition Patrick Frey, 2018), LOST, Syracuse (Kris Graves Projects, 2019), and New Monuments (Libraryman, 2019). Lavalette’s work has been featured by The New York Times, TIME, NPR, CNN, The Telegraph, Aperture, Foam Magazine, Hotshoe, among others, and his editorial work has accompanied stories in various publications, including The New York Times Magazine, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Esquire, Bloomberg Businessweek, Curbed, Vice Magazine, The Wire, Wallpaper, Monocle, The Guardian, and ZEITmagazin. Lavalette is represented by Robert Morat Galerie in Berlin and We Folk agency in London/New York.

Malcolm Daniel
Gus and Lyndall Wortham Curator of Photography, The Museum of Fine Arts
Houston, TX, United States
mfah.org

After 23 years at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he served as Senior Curator and Head of the Department of Photographs, Malcolm Daniel joined The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in 2013. Although his scholarly work has concentrated on the first 75 years of the medium, Daniel oversees the museum’s acquisitions and exhibitions spanning the full history of photography from its birth to the present day. His recent exhibitions and installations at the MFAH have included monographic presentations of Dawoud Bey, Fazal Sheikh, David Levinthal, Eugène Atget, and Sally Mann as well as an ongoing series, A History of Photography, selected from the museum’s permanent collection.

At FotoFest, he is most interested in reviewing the work of experienced photographers with several bodies of work under their belt, and is more interested in photography as creative expression than as documentation, no matter how worthy the cause (acknowledging, of course, that expressive and documentary photography are not mutually exclusive). He is not particularly interested in nudes, down-on-their-luck small towns, the final days of a beloved relative, or accidental abstractions made with 19th-century processes. Although the Museum occasionally (but rarely) acquires work seen at reviews, we are not looking for exhibition ideas or material at The Meeting Place. However, with nearly 30 years experience as a photography curator and a broad knowledge of the history, Daniel is able to help artists edit or sequence their work and can point to directions he feels most promising for future development.

LANGUAGES SPOKEN: English

Hernease Davis
Assistant Curator
Visual Studies Workshop
Rochester, NY
vsw.org

Hernease Davis is a photo-based artist and the Assistant Curator of Education and Public Programming at the Visual Studies Workshop (VSW) in Rochester, NY. Hernease’s work has been exhibited in galleries and institutions through the U.S., including the International Center of Photography (NYC, NY), Transformer Station (Cleveland, OH), the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (NYC, NY) and the Houston Center for Photography (Houston, TX). At the Visual Studies Workshop, Hernease develops programming that focuses on VSW’s Project Space Residents and current conversations in the photographic arts.

Hernease is interested in seeing all types of work, especially work that use alternative processes or incorporates mediums outside of photography, and work that the photographer considers to be in progress. She particularly enjoys discussing process and is open to ongoing and unfinished bodies of work.

Mary Goodwin
Co-founder, Aurora PhotoCenter
Publisher, Waltz Books
Indianapolis, IN, United States
auroraphoto.org
waltzbooks.com
marygoodwin.net

Mary Goodwin is the cofounder of Aurora PhotoCenter, a nonprofit organization that supports creativity through photography since 2019.
Serving as a creative hub, Aurora elevates the photographic arts through exhibitions, residencies, workshops, talks, and access to creative tools for practicing artists. Located in Indianapolis, Indiana, Aurora PhotoCenter is a bridge between local artists and the greater photographic community, with a regional, national, and international scope. Aurora’s programming
has featured the work of artists including Tarrah Krajnak, Kris Graves, Rebecca Norris Webb, Adam Ekberg, and Keliy Anderson-Staley, among others.

Goodwin is also the publisher at Waltz Books, a photobook publishing company with a focus on the relationship between the photographic image and the book format since 2012. As the former associate Director at Light Work in Syracuse, New York, she has curated exhibitions by Deana Lawson, Yolanda del Amo, and Stephen Chalmers, among other artists.

Goodwin can offer feedback on the clarity and strengths of specific images, edits, and sequencing choices, as well as more general advice on the exhibition and publication of projects.

David Haberstich
Curator of Photography, National Museum of American History
Washington D.C., United States
americanhistory.si.edu

David Haberstich is the Curator of Photography at the National Museum of American History, where I collect documentary photographs and manage archival collections containing photographs about all aspects of American life. Recent exhibitions include Gift of the Artist (photographers as donors); and Jazz Photographs of Francis Wolff, and he recently presented about photographs of African American blackface entertainers to the College Art Association, 2019. Currently, he is planning an exhibition of Frank Espada's photographs of the Puerto Rican diaspora, and writing an essay on the history of work photography for publication in a book on Dawn Rogala's photographs of circus workers. Additionally, he is working on a book about the National Museum of American History’s collection of photographs and documents from the African American-owned Scurlock studio of Washington, 1911-1994; a book about legendary teachers of photography and their students; and essays about the photographers of the Dada and Surrealist movements.

LANGUAGES SPOKEN: English; a little French.

Haley Berkman Karren
Principal & Founder, Karren Art Advisory
Senior Curator, Exchange Art
Houston, TX, United States
karrenartadvisory.com
exchange.art

Haley Berkman Karren is an art advisor and appraiser with Karren Art Advisory as well as Senior Curator with Exchange Art, the leading fine art NFT marketplace on the Solana blockchain. She has previously held curatorial positions at the Menil Collection; the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Department of Photography at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Dallas Museum of Art; and the Pentagram Stiftung, Venice. She also has previous experience in auction houses, galleries, and art consultancies. She holds a B.A. with honors in Art History and Archaeology from Washington University in St. Louis, and an M.A. in the History of Art and Archaeology from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, where she focused on contemporary art and photography.

Karren is interested in reviewing conceptual photography, documentary photography, and work that utilizes historic and alternative processes. She prefers seeing portfolios that feature work from at least one resolved project, but is also happy to speak with emerging photographers. She is interested in speaking with photographers who are considering NFTs and would like to learn about the NFT space.

Languages spoken: English

Geoffrey C. Koslov
Owner, Foto Relevance, LLC.
Houston, TX, United States
fotorelevance.com

Geoffrey Koslov co-founded Foto Relevance, a gallery located in the museum district of Houston, Texas, for contemporary photography-based art. He is interested in the creative use of the many different genres of photographic expression. In addition to life as a gallerist, Geoffrey is a collector himself that also enjoys writing about photographers he meets who he finds are creating new and challenging work.

He served for many years on the Photography Acquisitions Subcommittee of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), and the Board of Directors for the Houston Center for Photography (HCP). He was formerly a member of HCP’s Exhibitions Committee and a former co-chair of its Print Auction. Geoffrey has participated as a portfolio reviewer at the FotoFest Meeting Place, the Center for Fine Art Photography (CFAP), the Colorado Photographic Arts Center (CPAC), The Medium Festival of Photography, Photolucida, Critical Mass, PhotoVisa, and ASmith Gallery. Other organizations in which he participates are the MFAH’s Photo Forum, and several photography critique groups, including Pixels&Silver, the Houston Inner Loop Photography, and the Houston Photographic Society.

LANGUAGES SPOKEN: English

Celina Lunsford
Artistic Director, Fotografie Forum Frankfurt
Frankfurt, Germany
www.fffrankfurt.org

Celina Lunsford is the artistic director of the Fotografie Forum Frankfurt exhibition program and the FFF Academy. As a co-founder of RAY 2018, a triennial in Frankfurt/RheinMain, her curatorial eye is focused on extraordinary interdisciplinary photographic themes and artists. She has curated for other festivals and collections such as the International Photography Festival Lodz, Poland; Lianzhou International Photography Festival, China; Fundación MAPFRE Fundación Telefonica; the H2 Zentrum für Gegenwartskunst, Augsburg; and the Imogen Cunningham Trust. Lunsford is frequently a jury member for international prizes and fellowships. By cooperating with the Country Guest of Honor projects of Frankfurt Book Fair, she has dealt with platforming photography from Norway, India, Brazil, Georgia, Turkey, Finland, and Indonesia, among others. She is currently looking for innovative work that deals with Ideologies on a global or personal levels.

LANGUAGES SPOKEN: English, German

James E. Maloney
Private Collector
Houston, TX, United States

I have been involved in photography and collecting photography for the past thirty years. I am privileged to have served on the boards of directors of both Fotofest and the Houston Center for Photography. I am a trustee of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and am currently the Co-Chair of the Photography Committee of the Museum. In my other life, I am a trial lawyer.

I am honored to have been chosen as a reviewer for many Meeting Places in the past and to be asked to review at the Meeting Place in 2020. The opportunity to meet new artists, to see and to discuss new work is not to be missed.

LANGUAGES SPOKEN: English, Spanish, some French

Ute Noll
Director, Visual Projects & Gallery Uno Art Space
Stuttgart, Germany
unoartspace.com

Ute Noll has been working internationally and interdisciplinary in the broad field of photography for more than two decades. She is a photo director, magazine editor, curator, writer, and university lecturer and offers her extensive expertise and her long-term experience under the one roof of her project Agency Ute Noll - Visual Projects, based in Stuttgart (formerly named On Photography & Illustration). She also runs Gallery Uno Art Space in Stuttgart, founded in 2007. In her gallery Ute Noll has mounted more than 40 shows with international photographers, also FotoFest discoveries, since 2013, Ute Noll is also photo director at Du Magazine, Zurich, with a focus on art, culture, and modern life. Recently, she has been a judge for competitions such as Lianzhou Punctum Photography Award, Unicef Photo of the Year Award, Swiss Press Photo and Krasnodar Photovisum Prize. Ute considers work for exhibitions, gallery shows, and publications. However, she makes no commitments during the reviews on site but comes back to these artists later.

Ute Noll is most interested in fresh and contemporary approaches, documentary and fine art, and more, but she prefers work that is strong in concept and narrative. Careful and aesthetic execution is also essential for her. She is not interested in seeing commercial, nude, or landscape photography.

LANGUAGES SPOKEN: German and English

Lillian O'Brien Davis
Curator of Exhibitions and Public Programs
Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography
Toronto, ON, Canada
gallery44.org

Lillian O’Brien Davis is a curator and writer currently based in Toronto, ON, Canada. She is the Curator of Exhibitions and Public Programs at Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography, a Canadian Artist-Run Centre. She has curated projects at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, Susan Hobbs Gallery, the MacKenzie Art Gallery, SUPPORT and the School of Art Gallery at the University of Manitoba. Her writing has appeared in BlackFlash magazine, Canadian Art online, C magazine, the Brooklyn Rail, Peripheral Review and Insight Magazine.

She is most interested in reviewing work that explores photography from a contemporary art perspective. She is not interested in seeing work by photographers whose primary goal is gallery representation. As a Canadian-based curator working in the artist-run centre context, she is happy to discuss creative possibilities for experimental photography and lens-based practices.

Christopher Rauschenberg
Board Chair & Exhibition Committee, Blue Sky Gallery
Portland, OR, United States
BlueSkyGallery.org

Christopher Rauschenberg is co-curator and board chairman of Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, Oregon. Blue Sky was established in 1975 by Mr. Rauschenberg and 4 other photographers. Since then, Mr. Rauschenberg has co-curated 873 solo exhibitions by 746 different artists. Mr. Rauschenberg has been a photographer since 1973 and has had 122 solo shows of his own work in eight countries.

Blue Sky Gallery is a non-profit artists' space which produces 20-24 solo exhibitions per year plus one or two group shows. It produces an annual yearbook that features 6 images from each show. Over the last 3 years, Blue Sky has produced 109 print-on-demand catalogs for our exhibiting artists. The gallery's focus and passion is on promoting emerging artists. Since 2004, it has presented solo shows by 114 photographers from FotoFest, plus 62 more from Photolucida, Arles, Rhubarb Rhubarb, Bratislava, Brasilia, Santa Fe, Mannheim, Montreal, Photo Alliance and Photo Nola. Blue Sky has presented solo shows by artists from 53 countries.

As with all FotoFest reviewers, you should look at our website to see if you and the gallery are a good match. Bear in mind that we are looking for coherent bodies of work, rather than isolated great pictures.

LANGUAGES SPOKEN: English

Barbara Tannenbaum
Chair, Prints, Drawings, and Photographs and Curator of Photography, Cleveland Museum of Art
Cleveland, OH, United States
clevelandart.org

Lisa Volpe
Associate Curator, The Museum of Fine Arts
Houston, TX, United States
mfah.org

Lisa Volpe is the Associate Curator, Photography at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Before arriving in Houston, she was the Curator of the Wichita Art Museum where she oversaw all areas of the museum's collection. Additionally, she held various curatorial roles at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA), and fellowships at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Lisa does not wish to see nudes and pure landscapes.

LANGUAGES SPOKEN: English