Marie Barbier
Photo Editor
CNN Digital
New York City, NY, United States
cnn.com

Biography Forthcoming

Mary Bisbee-Beek
Independent Book Publicist
READ/SEE
Portland, OR, United States
marybisbeebeek.com

Mary Bisbee-Beek has worked in book publishing for the greater part of 40+ years, with added experience as a photo archivist at The Oakland Museum, and the director of The Cartoon Art Museum in the San Francisco Bay Area. As a book publicist, her clients often include photographers, as well as poets, literary novelists, and creative non-fiction authors.

In addition to book publicity, the Read/See office actively concentrates on Publishing Sherpa services which help authors and photographers gain perspective about audience, publishers, and strategic next steps whilst they are planning a publication project. The Sherpa often makes introductions to editors, writers, and potentially interesting associations with publishers and event venues. Clients of Bisbee-Beek have included Phaidon Publishing and Schilt Publishing, clients of Kehrer Verlag and University of Georgia Press, and other independent entities.

FOCUS: Bisbee-Beek is open to all genres of work including social documentary work, art photography and nature photography. Her feedback centers on a portfolio’s content, focusing on editorial and publishing advice with an eye toward publication and possibly exhibition.

LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY: English

Marina Chao
Curator
The Center for Photography at Woodstock
Kingston, NY, United States
cpw.org

Marina Chao is a curator at the Center for Photography at Woodstock, in Kingston, NY. She has previously held curatorial positions at the International Center of Photography and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She was awarded a 2019 Curatorial Research Fellowship from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for a project exploring the intersections of image, language, and technology.

FOCUS: Chao is particularly interested in seeing conceptual, feminist, and research/archive based work.

LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY: English

Kathy Cho
Curator-in-Residence
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts
Omaha, NE, United States
bemiscenter.org
kathycho.info

Kathy Cho (she/they) is a curator who produces exhibitions, events, images, and writing to collectively archive loose narratives of lived experiences. Ongoing research includes expanding the visual and dialogic lexicon of (Asian) diaspora artists, and exploring the physical and digital architectures of affect.

She received an MFA in Curating from Goldsmiths, University of London, was a Curatorial Intern at Tate Modern in 2018, and the 2020-2021 Curatorial Fellow at The Kitchen. She is currently the Curator-in-Residence at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, and has previously contributed to art ecosystems in New York, London, Philadelphia, Chicago and online.

FOCUS: Cho is particularly interested in reviewing work that explores physical/digital space and identity, and work that expands the conceptual and material issues around photography. They are not interested in reviewing heavily edited images with digital effects.

LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY: English

Paris Chong
Gallery Manager & Curator
Leica Gallery
Los Angeles, CA, United States
leicagalleryla.com

Paris Chong is the gallery director of the prestigious Leica Gallery Los Angeles. With over two decades of experience as a curator, she has represented galleries and artists at events, including Photo LA, Photo SF, Paris Photo, Paris Photo LA, and The Palm Springs Photo Festival, in addition to promoting Leica Gallery Los Angeles at international shows such as Art Basel and Photo Paris.  

Chong has also served as a respected and sought-after portfolio reviewer for The International Photography Awards (IPA), LACP, Photoville, The Palm Springs Photo Festival (PSPF), Rencontres de Arles, PISPA, Exposure LACP, Focus photo l.a., OpenWalls Arles, Photolucida, ASMP, and the ongoing Meet the Curator portfolio reviews for Leica Akademie USA.  

Chong's extensive involvement in the art community has seen her coordinating intimate and large group events at Leica Camera’s flagship store in West Hollywood. These events have featured celebrated artists, from the legendary Henri Cartier Bresson and Sebastiao Salgado to contemporary powerhouses such as Neal Preston, Julian Lennon, Lenny Kravitz, Maggie Steber, Mary Ellen Mark, and Ralph Gibson.   

Chong also gives back to the community on multiple levels, such as serving as a Board Member for The Foundation for The Aids Monument (FAM), a nonprofit formed to secure funding for a memorial monument in West Hollywood and The West Hollywood Design District (WHDD).   

Further to her philanthropic side, Chong curates still life photography showings for The American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) at its historic Hollywood headquarters.

LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY: English

Alyssa Ortega Coppelman
Independent Photo Editor and Photobook Consultant
Austin, TX, United States
alyssacoppelman.com

Alyssa Ortega Coppelman is an independent photo editor and photobook consultant based in Austin, Texas. For two decades, she served as half of the art department at Harper’s Magazine, most recently as Deputy Art Director. Currently, she is Art Editor at the Oxford American, which won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2016 and has been nominated thrice since in that category. She is also the Archival Producer on the Emmy-nominated PBS NewsHour series, Brief But Spectacular, for which she sources creative visual accompaniment for short interviews with a wide variety of guests. Several artists she has pitched have been guests on the show.

Working directly with photographers, Alyssa provides oversight in editing, sequencing, design, and editorial aspects of photobook projects and portfolios. Alyssa serves as guest lecturer to undergraduate and graduate photography students, and enjoys the intensity of teaching day-long photo editing workshops.

LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY: English

Steven Evans
Executive Director
FotoFest
Houston, TX, United States
fotofest.org

Steven Evans is a curator and director of the award-winning organization FotoFest, based in Houston, Texas. FotoFest created the first and longest-running international biennial of photography in the U.S. He is responsible for its artistic direction, exhibitions, programs, and Biennial.

Evans has organized and co-curated many exhibitions for FotoFest, including the FotoFest Biennial 2024 Critical Geography, Biennial 2022 If I Had a Hammer, Biennial 2018 India: Contemporary Photographic and New Media Art, and Biennial 2016 Changing Circumstances: Looking at the Future of the Planet. He co-edited their respective related publications and FotoFest’s book African Cosmologies: Photography, Time, and the Other (2020) and Velvet Generation (2019).

FOCUS: Evans is looking for bodies of work with a well-defined purpose, fully formed or near completion, either in still photographs, video, or new media. He is particularly interested in work that addresses identity, technology, social awareness, gender, and/or sexuality.

LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY: English

Jon Feinstein
Curator and Co-Founder
Humble Arts Foundation
Seattle, WA, United States
jonfeinstein.com
hafny.org
instagram.com/humbleartsfoundation

REVIEWING FRIDAY ONLY

Jon Feinstein is a curator, photographer, writer, and co-founder of Humble Arts Foundation. Jon has curated countless exhibitions for over 15+ years at galleries and institutions, including: Photoville; Blue Sky Gallery, PDX; The Ogden Museum in New Orleans for PhotoNola; Photographic Center Northwest; Colorado Photographic Arts Center; and Barclays Arena in Brooklyn, NY for ArtBridge. He is a recipient of the 2019 BlueSky Curatorial Prize and the 2021 Peter S. Reed Photography Grant. His writing on photography has appeared in VICE, Aperture, The Adobe Blog, TIME, Photograph, Hyperallergic, and Lenscratch.

FOCUS: Feinstein is particularly interested in reviewing art photography, conceptual work, social documentary, portraiture, still life, collage, landscape, and video. He is not interested in reviewing nude portraits of women by straight male photographers.

LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY: English

Stephen Frailey
Founder and Editor
Dear Dave, magazine
New York City, NY, United States
deardavemagazine.com

Stephen Frailey is a photographer, writer and educator, and is the founder and editor of Dear Dave, magazine since 2007. A book of his short essays about contemporary photography, Looking at Photography, was published by Damiani Editore in 2020.

He was the Director of the photography program at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College from 1998 to 2004, and was the Chair of the BFA Photography and Video Department at the School of Visual Arts in New York from 1998 to 2018. He is the co-founder of the MPS Fashion Photography Program at the School of Visual Arts and created the Auction for Photographic Education in Afghanistan to create a photography department at Kabul University in 2003. He is a Chair Emeritus of SVA The School of Visual Arts.

His work is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the International Center for Photography, New York; the Princeton University Art Museum; the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University; and Vassar College. He has received two MacDowell Colony Fellowships, a National Endowment for the Arts Grant and an Aaron Siskind Foundation Grant. His critical writing on photography has appeared recently in Artforum, Aperture, The Brooklyn Rail, Frieze and photograph magazine.

FOCUS: Frailey is interested in reviewing all genres and sensibilities, and work that is original, surprising, and undermines conventions. He is not interested in clichés.

LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY: English

Nick Larsen
Managing Editor
Radius Books
Santa Fe, NM, United States
radiusbooks.org

Nick Larsen is an artist and book editor living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He studied at the University of Nevada, Reno, and Ohio State University, where he received his MFA in Sculpture.

Larsen has had over a dozen solo and collaborative exhibitions, including Old Haunts, Lower Reaches (Nevada Museum of Art, 2024), and has participated in many notable group exhibitions, including several editions of New American Paintings. Since 2022, he has been the managing editor at Radius Books, a non-profit art book publisher in Santa Fe, where he has overseen the publication of over forty-five photography, fine art, architecture, and poetry books.

FOCUS: Larsen is most interested in reviewing fine art photography and mixed media work incorporating photographic processes. He prefers not to review photojournalism or strictly documentary work.

LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY: English

Sandra Stevenson
Deputy Director of Photography
The Washington Post
Washington, D.C.
washingtonpost.com
sandramstevenson.com

Sandra M. Stevenson is an award-winning Writer, Visual Editor and Curator in the photography department at The Washington Post. As a deputy director of photography, she manages a team of picture editors who work on International, Climate, and Health + Science.

Prior to joining The Post, Sandra was an associate deputy director of photography at CNN, where she managed picture editors who curated the home screen, edited stories and newsletters, as well as special projects. Prior to that, she was an Assistant Editor who oversaw digital photo editors on the news desk, and worked on visual content for Race/Related and the Gender, in addition to exclusive projects such as "Overlooked" and “This Is 18.”

After receiving a BA in English from Syracuse University, Sandra spent four years working at NBC – first as a Page and then working on various news programs. From there, she became the program coordinator for the Black Filmmaker Foundation. During her time there, she held a deep commitment to helping people of color enter the film industry at various levels.

Sandra then returned to the news industry, by taking on a position at The Associated Press, where she spent eight years moving up from photo assistant to overseeing photo news coverage for Latin America and the Caribbean. She also took time to work on and an advanced degree in multimedia from l’Universite Toulouse in France.

Sandra was a contributing writer in the book Unseen: Unpublished Black History from The New York Times Photo Archives. She was the picture editor and co-curator on the book This Is 18.

FOCUS: Stevenson is particularly interested in reviewing documentary and multimedia work.

LANGUAGE PROFICIENCIES: English, French

Johan Trujillo
Independent Cultural Strategist, Researcher, Curator and Educator
Mexico City, Mexico

Johan Trujillo Argüelles (Mexico City, 1983) is a Mexican cultural strategist, researcher, curator, and educator whose reflections on imagery are inspired by the figure of the blind photographer. She has helped strengthen skills for formulating solid cultural initiatives and visual discourses, while disseminating and reflecting on contemporary Mexican photography through exhibitions, publications, educational programs, and networking events. She is co-author with Gerardo Nigenda of the photobook Triálogo (The Third, 2023), which was a finalist in the author's book category for the Prix du Livre 2024 at Les Rencontres d'Arles 2024 (France). She led the Centro de la Imagen as Director (2020–2024), having previously held the position of Head of the Education Department (2012–2017). She has served as a jury member, portfolio reviewer, and speaker at contests and festivals in Mexico and internationally.

Trujillo is open to review any type of photographic work.

LANGUAGE PROFICIENCIES: English and Spanish

Gary Van Zante
Curator of Photography, Art & Design
MIT Museum
Cambridge, MA, United States
mitmuseum.mit.edu

Gary Van Zante has been curator at the MIT Museum since 2002, where he has also been interim Director of Exhibitions, Director of the Wolk Gallery and, since 2012, curator of the Kurtz Gallery for Photography. His exhibitions in the Kurtz Gallery have ranged from American daguerreotype portraiture, Bauhaus photography and monographic exhibitions on György Kepes and Berenice Abbott, to contemporary photography of place. He curated the first American solo exhibitions for many European photographers including Joël Tettamanti, Gabriele Basilico, Patrick Tourneboeuf, Mila Teshiaeva, Júlio de Matos, and Ulrich Wüst.

Van Zante has recently been visiting research professor at the University of Paris VII Diderot. He has been contributing curator for exhibitions at the Photography Collection/August Sander Archive, Cologne; the Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow; Huis Marseilles photography museum, Amsterdam; Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, VA; and the New Orleans Museum of Art.

He has published articles and books on these topics, including a monograph on the nineteenth century photographer Theodore Lilienthal (Merrell, 2008); essays on the photographers Berenice Abbott (Mapfre, 2019; Ryerson Image Centre, 2022); Harold Edgerton (Steidl, 2019); and on Polaroid photography (Thames & Hudson, 2017). His monograph on the Berlin photographer Ulrich Wüst (Kerber, 2022) was recently recognized with an honorable mention in the annual book prize for 2023 of the Photography Network, College Art Association. His latest publication is an essay on the work of German photographers Ute and Werner Mahler (Ein Dorf 1950–2022, Hartmann, 2024).

FOCUS: Van Zante is especially interested in photography of place, urban and architectural photography, and scientific photography.

LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY: English

The Meeting Place Virtual Portfolio Review is open to lens-based and image-based artists and photographers who seek feedback on their portfolios and have at least one complete or very near-complete body of work ready for exhibition or publication.

Participating photographers must have access to an internet connection, a computer with a reliable webcam, microphone, and speaker, and a workspace free from distractions.

Each virtual review lasts 25 minutes with scheduled breaks in between.

Your registration to the Meeting Place Virtual Portfolio Review comes with several benefits beyond meeting with top Reviewers. All participating photographers receive:

• Free access to training sessions (covering best practices for virtual reviews, navigating screen sharing and showing portfolios on Zoom, and testing Zoom functions)
• Free access to live Q&As with program facilitators
• Inclusion in a digital Photographer Catalogue (provided to all Reviewers and participating photographers and made available for public view on FotoFest’s website)
• Eligibility to have your portfolio considered for the next iteration of FotoFest’s exhibition, Ten by Ten: Ten Portfolios from the Meeting Place

Present your portfolio in the way you feel most comfortable navigating. Examples include showing your portfolio in PDF form in Adobe Acrobat, JPG form on your computer’s native image viewer, or any image form in Adobe Bridge, Lightroom, or another software.

We recommend presenting your portfolio in PDF form due to its ease of navigating and ability to be emailed to potential collaborators.

All virtual reviews will be held via Zoom using the share-screen function to view the portfolio(s). Learn more about screen sharing on Zoom at this link.

Participating photographers can select their preference of Reviewers using our Reviewer preference ranking system, which will be available starting in late January. You will be asked to rank your top 15 Reviewers in order of preference, with #1 being your first choice.

All participating photographers will be listed in a digital Photographer Catalogue provided to all Reviewers and participating photographers and made available for public view on FotoFest's website. Each participating artist is represented with an image of their work and their contact information.

The Photographer Catalogue is an important reference material created by FotoFest staff for each in-person and virtual portfolio review. It is a resource for each photographer's contact information, social media, and website. Reviewers frequently utilize this visual compendium to familiarize themselves with your work and as a tool for networking.

Refunds will be processed with a 15% fee. Please allow up to two weeks for refund processing. No refunds will be given after January 15. Registrations to the Meeting Place Virtual Portfolio Review are non-transferable.

We look forward to helping you! Please contact Maureen "Mo" Munley, Program Associate of the Meeting Place Portfolio Reviews, at maureen@fotofest.org or 713.223.5522 ext 13.