Our Jurors

J. Sybylla Smith is an independent curator, podcaster, and consultant. Her creative framework, Concept Aware®: How You See & Why It Matters, provides visual artists with specific tools to bring their abstract ideas to fruition in image, text, exhibition, and book form. She consults with emerging and seasoned professionals to refine ideas and collaboratively contextualize their work, develop portfolios, write content, produce projects, create exhibitions, and complete book proposals. She has curated 40+ solo and group exhibitions featuring over 125 international photographers within the U.S., Mexico, Colombia and Japan. Her Concept Aware® podcast engages global photographers, curators and critics to discuss creative practice and the photobook-making process. Her 90+ episodes of unscripted conversations engage over 20K listeners in 79 countries. A published author, Smith writes for publications on contemporary photography, visual culture and creativity. Her book, Concept Aware®: A Creative Framework for Artists, is pending publication. She guest lectures, teaches Concept Aware® workshops and portfolio reviews internationally. Her work focuses on illuminating, elevating and amplifying the work of women photographers and highlighting underrepresented narratives with an intersectional lens.

Douglas Beasley's personal vision explores the spiritual and emotional aspects of people and place and is concerned with how the sacred is recognized and expressed in everyday life. Much of Doug's personal work is supported by grants and commissions and is widely exhibited and collected. In 2010 he had a permanent installation at the Castillo D'Albertis Cultural Museum on Sacred Places of North America. He has been published internationally and featured in numerous photo magazines such as Zoom, The Sun, B&W, PDN, Shots and PhotoVision. His first book Japan; A Nisei's First Encounter, offers insight into his journey to his mother's Japanese homeland. Earth Meets Spirit was published by 5 Continents Editions of Milan, Italy and is distributed internationally by Abrams. His most recent book Zen & the Art of Photography is a collection of Doug's writing. As founder and director of Vision Quest Photo Workshops, Doug provides workshops that emphasize personal expression and creative vision over the mechanics of camera use. His workshops are held at art and cultural centers across the US and around the world as well as Private Workshops at the Trade River Retreat Center, his cabin/retreat center in Northwest Wisconsin.

Aline Smithson is an interdisciplinary artist, editor, filmmaker, and educator based in Los Angeles, California. She has exhibited widely including over 50 solo shows at a variety of international institutions and her work has been featured in publications including The New York Times, The New Yorker, and PDN. Smithson is the Founder and Editor- in-Chief of Lenscratch, a daily journal on photography. In 2012, she received the Rising Star Award through the Griffin Museum of Photography for her contributions to the photographic community and she also received the prestigious Excellence in Teaching Award from CENTER. In 2014 and 2019, Smithson's work was selected for the Critical Mass Top 50. In 2015, the Magenta Foundation published her first significant monograph, Self & Others: Portrait as Autobiography, and in 2016, the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum commissioned Smithson to create a series of portraits for the upcoming Faces of Our Planet Exhibition. In 2018 and 2019, her work was exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery in London as part of the Taylor Wessing Prize. Kris Graves Projects published her book, LOST II: Los Angeles and included her work in SOLACE and On Death. Peanut Press released her monograph, Fugue State, in Fall of 2021. In 2022, she was named a Hasselblad Heroine. Smithson has been a juror for a host of organizations and galleries, and a reviewer and educator at photo festivals around the globe.

Ann M. Jastrab, MFA, is the Executive Director at the Center for Photographic Art (CPA) in Carmel, California. CPA strives to advance photography through education, exhibition and publication. These regional traditions, including mastery of craft, the concept of mentorship, and dedication to the photographic arts, evolved out of CPA's predecessor, the renowned Friends of Photography established in 1967. While respecting these West Coast traditions, CPA is also at the vanguard of the future of photographic imagery. Before coming onboard at CPA, Ann worked as the gallery director at RayKo Photo Center in San Francisco for 10 years until their closure in 2017. While being a champion of artists, she created a thriving artist-in-residence program at RayKo where multiple residents received Guggenheim Fellowships. Ann was also the gallery manager at Scott Nichols Gallery in San Francisco where she incorporated contemporary artists with the legends photography. During her tenure at the Center for Photographic Art, Ann has created important artist grant and scholarship programs to support creatives and students. She has also taken the organization from a regional arts center to one with members on 6 continents. She most recently launched a photography festival called PhotoCarmel that celebrates the medium on the central coast of California. Ann is a juror and reviewer for numerous organizations and institutions. She also taught for more than a decade at the Maine Photographic Workshops (now Maine Media Workshops) in Rockport, Maine.

Since 1998 Tom Chambers has exhibited photomontage images from ten photographic series both nationally and internationally in twenty one solo exhibitions and over seventy group exhibitions and art fairs. Tom has received fellowships from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Virginia Commission for the Arts. His photography is held in the collections of the National Museum of Photography, Bogotá, Colombia; California Sate Polytechnic University; Santa Barbara Museum of Art, CA; Santa Fe Museum of Art, NM; Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Bangkok, Thailand; Texas Photographic Society; City of Jacksonville, FL - Art in Public Places; University of Texas; Sir Richard Branson, personal collection; and the Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines. Tom's work has been published in multiple publications and books. "Entropic Kingdom", containing images from five series, was published by Modernbook Editions in 2012. Galerie Vevais published "Werkdruck No. 6" in 2015 featuring his Illumination series. A retrospective book, Hearts and Bones, was released in the Fall of 2018, by Unicorn Publishing, London.

Janice Mehlman has exhibited her photographs in Museums and Art Galleries throughout the United States, Europe, and South America. In her work she uses light and shadow to create abstraction, mystery, and illusion. There is a powerful psychological aspect to the newer work, adding sensuality and tension. The finished exhibition prints have a finely wrought delicacy. Her most recent exhibitions in Italy were at Barbara Paci Art Gallery, Pietrasanta, Grand Hotel Imperiale, Forte dei Marmi, Laura Tartarelli Contemporary Art, Pietrasanta, then in the Aria Art Gallery, in London, The Museum of Modern Art, in Bogota, Colombia, The Quogue Gallery, in NY, Beatriz Esguerra Gallery, in Bogota, The Heidi Cho Gallery, in NYC, Galleria La Bottega, in Pietrasanta and the Palazzo Mediceo Museum in Seravezza, Italy. There are Six Monographs published about her work. Her photographs have been included in many books on the History of Photography and in articles and reviews world-wide, including The World History of Photography, by Naomi Rosenblum. Mehlman's work is in numerous International public, corporate and private collections. Janice Mehlman is a Professor Emeritus of Photography in the City University of New York, and she divides her creative time between her studios in Brooklyn, NY and Pietrasanta, Italy.

Jennifer Schlesinger is a curator, artist, and photography appraiser based out of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Jennifer graduated from the College of Santa Fe in 1998 with a B.A. in Photography and Journalism. She served as the Assistant Director of Santa Fe Art Institute from 2003-2005 and was the Director of VERVE Gallery of Photography for over a decade, 2005-2017. Since 2016, she has been the founder, owner and Director at Obscura Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Schlesinger has taught at the College of Santa Fe and through the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops, Art Intersection, and other venues. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for AIPAD (Association of International Photography Art Dealers). In addition, Jennifer Schlesinger is an accredited member of the Appraisers Association of America specializing in photography appraisals and is USPAP compliant.

Sarah Sudhoff is a Cuban-American artist and community advocate based in Houston, Tx. Her work has been exhibited at Blaffer Art Museum, McNay Art Museum, Donggang Photo Museum, Austin Museum of Art, Pioneer Works, Luckman Gallery, Magenta Foundation, Filter Photo, Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, Galveston Arts Center, and the Colorado Photographic Arts Center. Articles including her work have appeared in The New York Times, Wired, Time, Cabinet, and Southwest Contemporary. Sudhoff's research and residencies have been supported by Artpace, Tiffany Foundation, Penland School of Craft, McColl Art Center, Houston Arts Alliance, Kinsey Institute, the DoSeum, and DOMUS Sudhoff's recent visiting artist lectures include Rice University, RMIT University in Melbourne, Rhode Island School of Design, Blaffer Art Museum, Health & Wellbeing International Conference in Oxford, England, and Material Selves: Health, Gender and Performance symposium at the University of London.

Wendi Schneider is a visual artist renowned for her ethereal photographs that fuse the fragile beauty of the natural world with the luminosity of precious metals. Drawing upon a rich background in painting and art history and inspired by her collection of early 20th-century photographs, Schneider crafts images that evoke a sense of transcendence and ephemeral grace. Using photography as a reference for her paintings in the 1980s, she began layering oils onto her prints, a technique that evolved into the signature digital layering and meticulous hand-applied metal leafing of her celebrated 'States of Grace' series. Her internationally exhibited work is held in permanent collections, including the Asheville Art Museum, the Auburn University Library Special Collections, the Center for Creative Photography, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and the Memphis Brooks Museum, among others. Schneider is represented by A Gallery For Fine Photography (New Orleans), Arnika Dawkins Gallery (Atlanta), Catherine Couturier Gallery (Houston), Etherton Gallery (Tucson), PhotoGraphic Gallery (San Miguel de Allende), Rick Wester Fine Art (New York), Vision Gallery (Jerusalem), and Wach Gallery (Cleveland).

Matthew Christopher has had an interest in abandoned sites since he was a child, and started documenting them in 2006 while researching the decline of the state hospital system. Since then, he has photographed and written about the ruins of schools, churches, industrial sites, amusement parks, malls, hotels, and prisons across the world, including defunct auto factories in Detroit, former gold mining towns in California, and the rusting husk of what was once the largest and fastest ocean liner built in the United States. His website, Abandoned America, has been featured in books, magazines, and media outlets worldwide, including The New York Times, ABC and NBC News, The Atlantic, Photographer's Forum, and many more. His articles chronicling the lost histories of iconic places and the disastrous social consequences of our disposable culture have appeared in numerous publications and media outlets. Matthew's two monographs, Abandoned America: The Age of Consequences (Jonglez Publishing, 2014) and Abandoned America: Dismantling the Dream (Carpet Bombing Culture, 2016), explore the tragic legacies of locations like the Forest Haven Developmental Center, closed amidst horrifying allegations of abuse and neglect, and Gary, Indiana, a steel town devastated when U.S. Steel shuttered their mills. Matthew has an MFA in Fine Art Photography from Rochester Institute of Technology and a BA in Film and Media Arts from Temple University. He has taught photography at a college level and now teaches photography workshops. Galleries and museums across the U.S. have exhibited Matthew's work, and he lectures on abandoned spaces and mental health history. Currently, he resides in the Hudson Valley, where he continues to update his website with new essays and photographs, hosts and produces The Abandoned America Podcast, and is hard at work on new projects including his next book and a new photo series.

Lee Anne White is a fine art photographer with a deep love for landscapes. She teaches photography and creativity workshops around the country, including at Maine Media, the Chicago Botanic Garden, and on Amelia Island. A former editor-in-chief of Fine Gardening, she's also written and photographed many books and articles on garden design and landscape architecture. Her work has been featured in magazines like Sunset and Better Homes and Gardens. Lee Anne holds degrees in creative studies and journalism. "Quiet places call to me. I find them in the desert, by the sea, atop mountains, on foggy mornings, in gardens and at historic sites where voices from the past whisper their stories. I am drawn to contrasts: the natural and designed, light and shadow, open and closed, inside and out, smooth and textured, sharp and blurred. I have an affinity for bold-foliage plants, found objects, traditional utilitarian crafts and vintage tools. I want to know the history of the land, how it has been shaped by humans and how it has shaped us in return. And I am infinitely curious about the creative process, creative people and their creative practices." -Lee Anne White

Andrew Moore is widely acclaimed for his long term photographic series, which record the effect of time on the natural and built landscape. These series include work made in Cuba, Russia, Bosnia, Times Square, Detroit, The Great Plains, the American South, and most recently the Hudson Valley. Moore's photographs are held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Yale University Art Gallery, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Library of Congress amongst many other institutions. He has received a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 2014, and has as well been award grants by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the J M Kaplan Fund. Moore was a lecturer on photography in the Visual Arts Program at Princeton University from 2001 to 2010. Presently he teaches a graduate seminar in the MFA Photography Video and Related Media program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Douglas Stockdale is a visual artist, editor, and educator whose work centers on the photobook as a primary form of contemporary photographic expression. He is the founder, editor, and publisher of PhotoBook Journal, a respected platform dedicated to the critical review of photobooks, and writes the long-running blog Singular Images, where he reflects on photographic practice, sequencing, and visual narrative. He serves as Executive Director of Photographers Exchange, a critique program based at the Irvine Fine Arts Center in California, where photographers engage in sustained, print-based dialogue around their work. Stockdale has taught at Los Angeles Center of Photography, Medium Photo Festival, and SouthEast Center for Photography, and has been a portfolio reviewer for LensCulture and LACP, contributing to the development of emerging and mid-career photographers. As an artist, his practice explores memory, aging, family history, and American culture through sequence-driven projects. His work is held in the collections of Museo d'Art Contemporanea di Roma, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, and Reminders Photography Stronghold.

Lynn Bianchi is a fine art photographer and multimedia artist whose work has been exhibited internationally in more than thirty solo shows and in major museums around the world. Her photographs have appeared at the Brooklyn Museum, Yale Art Gallery, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, the Musée de l'Elysée in Switzerland, and the Art Gallery of Ontario, among others. Servitude I from her renowned Heavy in White series was acquired by the Walker Art Center in 2019 and featured in its catalogue The Expressionist Figure. Bianchi's art explores the intersection of stillness and movement, merging photography and video to create meditative reflections on the grandeur and magic of the everyday.