2024 PORTFOLIO REVIEWS
Dates: September 18 – 21, 2024
Location:
Columbia College Chicago Student Center | 754 S Wabash Ave
Early Bird Pricing (through July 1st):
5 for $325 | 8 for $440 | 12 for $540
Student Reviews:
$40/each (email caitlin@filterphoto.org with a copy of your Student ID to register)
Refunds will be processed with a 15% fee. No refunds will be given after August 1st.
Participants sign up for twenty-minute face-to-face reviews and receive candid feedback about their images, as well as information on getting their work exhibited and published.
We are thrilled to have so many of our attendees walk away with connections that have led to exhibitions, publications, and the indispensable opportunity to network with their peers. Read more about preparing for reviews below.
Dates: September 18 – 21, 2024
Location:
Columbia College Chicago Student Center | 754 S Wabash Ave
Price:
5 for $350 | 8 for $460 | 12 for $560
Student Reviews:
$40/each (email caitlin@filterphoto.org with a copy of your Student ID to register)
Refunds will be processed with a 15% fee. No refunds will be given after August 1st.
2024 PORTFOLIO REVIEWS
September 18 – 21, 2024
Columbia College Chicago Student Center
REVIEWER BIOS
Sara Barrett is senior photo editor at The New York Times. Prior to joining the paper, she oversaw the photojournalism program at Columbia University, where she also taught photography for many years. In her first years in New York, she worked as a freelance photographer and photo editor. Her photographs have appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Esquire, The Times, and a number of other publications, including Spy, where she was one of the original contributors.
Barrett is interested in seeing long-term personal projects, particularly work that might locate itself in the intersection between art and journalism. She is also interested in bodies of work that are thematic, suggestive and idea-based, in ways that could be applied to opinion pieces.
Nelson Chan was born in New Jersey to immigrant parents from Hong Kong and Taiwan and has spent most of his life between the States and Hong Kong. Having grown up on two continents with unique cultures, this immigrant experience has influenced the majority of his work.
Nelson is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, where he received his BFA and a graduate of the University of Hartford, Hartford Art School, where he received his MFA. He has been exhibited nationally and internationally at institutions such as the Museum of Chinese in America, New York, NY; Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA; The Print Center, Philadelphia, PA; Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany; and 798 Space, Beijing, China. His books are collected in the institutional libraries of the Harry Ransom Center, The MET, The Guggenheim, The Whitney, and MoMA.
Book publishing is a primary focus of Nelson's studio practice. He is a Co-Founder of TIS books, and from 2016-19 he was the Production Manager of Aperture Foundation. Based in the Bay Area, Nelson is an Assistant Professor of Photography at the California College of the Arts.
Chan is most interested in reviewing Fine Art bodies of work that are intended for publication projects.
SKYLARK EDITIONS is a non-profit publishing project based in Chicago that provides a platform for the creation and distribution of innovative photobooks by emerging and established artists.
Kelli Connell is an Editor at SKYLARK Editions, a non-profit publishing project based in Chicago that provides a platform for creating and distributing innovative photo books by emerging and established artists. Connell is an artist whose work investigates sexuality, gender, identity and photographer-sitter relationships. Her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the J Paul Getty Museum among others. Recent publications include Kelli Connell: Pictures for Charis (Aperture & Center for Creative Photography), PhotoWork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice (Aperture) and the monograph Kelli Connell: Double Life (DECODE Books). Connell has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, MacDowell, and The Center for Creative Photography.
Paul D’Amato’s work is in the permanent collections of several museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Contemporary Photography and the Portland Museum of Art in Maine. His work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Fitchburg Museum of Art, Blue Sky Gallery, and the Photographic Resource Center. D’Amato lives in Chicago where he teaches at Columbia College Chicago and is an editor at SKYLARK EDITIONS.They are interested in looking at work by LGBTQIA+ artists, BIPOC artists, and women artists. Seeing book dummies of completed projects and work that would translate in book form in non-traditional ways is of particular interest. They are particularly interested in seeing work by photographers who live in the midwest.
Coco Conroy is associate director at Johnson Lowe Gallery in Atlanta. An enthusiastic creative professional with nearly twenty years of dedication to supporting the arts, she previously served as Gallery Director at Jackson Fine Art, where she specialized in 20th-century and contemporary photography, art advisement, and collection building and management. Prior to joining JFA, she received her MA in literary studies, worked as a freelance journalist and digital editor and as an independent events coordinator for A Cappella Books. She has sat on the advisory committee of Atlanta Celebrates Photography since 2016 and joined the Art Papers Board of Directors in 2023. She has served as a judge or juror for PDN’s Curator Awards, PhotoNOLA, Photolucida’s Critical Mass, and the Dairy Barn Art Center’s Wideopen Biennial, among many other national and international juried competitions.
Conroy is interested in reviewing alternative process, documentary bodies of work and portraiture.
Leo Hsu is the Executive Director of Silver Eye Center for Photography in Pittsburgh. Silver Eye's mission is to promote the power of contemporary photography as a fine art by supporting and sharing the work of emerging, mid-career, under-represented and underseen artists. Hsu is an editor at Fraction Magazine, wrote and edited for Fraction and Foto8/EI8HT and was a news photographer. He taught in criticism and history of photography and studio at Carnegie Mellon University. He holds a PhD in Anthropology from NYU and a NY State Certificate in Culture and Media.
Hsu is interested in recent and new work by artists that speak to contemporary social concerns while driven by subjective experience that expand the possibilities of photography or engage critically with the history of photography; and/or that express a deep personal investment in the processes of art making. He is interested in works in progress and work that demonstrates process, and vulnerability.
Ann M. Jastrab 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.
Jastrab is interested in seeing all types of photography, especially work by LGBTQ+ artists, documentary projects, alternative and historical process work, and traditional film based photography. She can offer exhibition opportunities as well as other support for artists.
Michelle Kanaar has 15 years of experience as a visual journalist, editor and newsroom leader. She is committed to social justice reporting and equity within the journalism industry.
Michelle is a co-founder and co-director of the Prism Photo Workshop, whose mission is to provide resources and support for young photographers from diverse backgrounds to tell the stories of underrepresented people and communities with dignity.
She also co-founded Borderless Magazine, an award-winning nonprofit news outlet that is reimagining immigration journalism for a more just and equitable future.
She is interested in reviewing photojournalism or documentary work.Jennifer Murray is an artist, educator, curator, and Museum Manager of 21c Museum Hotel, Chicago. She was previously the executive director of Filter Photo, a nonprofit festival, exhibition, and educational space. Her research and professional practice spans photography-based visual, curatorial, and writing projects. Murray is a frequent curator, portfolio reviewer, and juror at contemporary art events across the US. She taught at Loyola University Chicago for many years and is an independent artists' consultant. She received an MFA in photography from Columbia College Chicago. With a strong curatorial and educator background, she is most interested in viewing idea-driven, project-based work. She is open to discussions about editing and sequencing and can provide feedback about preparing a project for exhibition.
Murray is not interested in seeing strictly formal work without a well-articulated concept.
Ariel Pate is the Assistant Curator of Photography at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Since starting in 2016, she has curated permanent collection-based exhibitions, including On Repeat: Serial Photography (2022); Portrait of Milwaukee (2019); and Photographing Nature’s Cathedrals: Carleton E. Watkins, Eadweard Muybridge, and H. H. Bennett (2018), as well as co-curating Shifting Perspectives: Landscape Photographs from the Collection (2022), which was accompanied by an audio guide of community voices facilitated by Pate. She has supported numerous other photography exhibitions, including the extensive virtual tour of Susan Meiselas: Through a Woman’s Lens (2020). She is part of Native Initiatives at the Milwaukee Art Museum, a team of Museum staff and external advisors dedicated to ensuring that Indigenous cultures, resilience, and art are respectfully represented and celebrated throughout the Museum.
She previously served as a curatorial assistant in the Department of Photography at the Art Institute of Chicago, and received an MA in Curatorial Studies from the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste Städelschule and J. W. Goethe University, in Frankfurt, Germany.
Pate is interested in reviewing cohesive projects and portfolios, including process-based work that considers the wider implications of photography.
Dr. W. Brian Piper is the Freeman Family Curator of Photographs, Prints, and Drawings at the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA), where he previously served as the Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow in Photographs. At NOMA his curatorial credits include Called to the Camera: Black American Studio Photographers (2022), Picture Man: Portraits by Polo Silk (2022), Debbie Fleming Caffery: In Light of Everything (2023), Changing Course: Reflections on New Orleans Histories (2018), and the forthcoming Show and Tell: A Brief History of Photography and Text (2024). Piper holds a PhD in American Studies from the College of William and Mary and has written widely on a variety of photographic subjects.
Piper is interested in reviewing projects or bodies of work with a cohesive argument about their subject matter; projects that interrogate ideas about history or memory in a number of facets, work that explores contemporary social and political relations, portraiture, and camera-less photography. Of special interest is work that is also about the history of photography, and photographic media itself. He is more interested in seeing work or projects that are nearer their beginnings in the process rather than a complete product with no room for development.
Allison Peters Quinn is a curator, writer and art administrator based in Chicago, USA. Through her practice, she explores civically-oriented art projects that address intersections between public space, the built environment and human agency. Over the past twenty years, she has organized significant exhibitions and published essays for emerging and established contemporary artists such as Candida Alvarez, Theaster Gates, and Jefferson Pinder. Quinn is currently the Director of Exhibition & Residency Programs at Hyde Park Art Center.
Quinn is interested in reviewing projects that address social justice, the medium of photography and alternative processes, or the environmental crisis.
Danielle A. Scruggs (she/her) is a photo editor at The Wall Street Journal and a freelance photographer based in Chicago. She graduated from Howard University with a degree in journalism and from the Maryland Institute College of Art with a master’s degree in digital art. She also attended the Kalish Workshop for Visual Editing and the New York Times Portfolio Review in 2018.
Danielle is also the founder and editor of Black Women Directors, a digital library highlighting the work of Black women and non-binary filmmakers.
Most recently, she was a staff photo editor on the global picture desk at Getty Images, where she edited breaking news and sports images and produced stories for @gettyimages's Instagram account. Previously, she was a news photo editor at Vox Media, a Senior Photo Editor at ESPN’s The Undefeated (now called Andscape), and the Director of Photography at the award-winning Chicago Reader, the oldest alternative newsweekly in the United States.
Danielle is a general member of Diversify.Photo and Women Photograph and served as a board member of Authority Collective for two years, all groups committed to creating equity and parity within the visual storytelling and photojournalism fields.
Scruggs is most interested interested in reviewing documentary work and editorial assignment work
Kristin Taylor is the collections curator at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, where she also directs the museum's education programs. Select exhibitions she has organized include as Captured Earth (2024); Reproductive: Health, Fertility, Agency (2021); and Chicago Stories: Carlos Javier Ortiz and David Schalliol (2019). She also manages the museum’s podcast, Focal Point, and is an adjunct instructor in the photography department at Columbia College Chicago. Kristin holds a BFA in Painting from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MA in Visual Arts Management from Columbia College Chicago.
Taylor is interested in reviewing works utilizing experimental processes and in seeing works about under-recognized histories and works that address feminist and environmentalist issues.
Sasha Wolf Projects represents 15 photographic artists, working to place their prints in museum and university collections, private and corporate collections and in individual homes. Sasha reviews and judges work for leading art institutions, universities and fairs numerous times a year and lectures and conducts artist’s workshops around the country on professional practices and project development. Sasha is the Founder and Director of the PhotoWork Foundation and host of the PhotoWork podcast. Sasha’s book, PhotoWork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice, was published by Aperture in the Fall of 2019.
Wolf is interested in reviewing documentary and post documentary bodies of work.
Clint Woodside is a photographer, curator and founder of Deadbeat Club, an acclaimed independent publishing house rooted in contemporary photography. Based in Los Angeles, Woodside works with artists around the world with the expectation of close collaboration and long standing partnership. With thoughtful design, innovative editing and meticulous print quality, each title is one Deadbeat Club is proud to share with its community. Woodside has curated shows and exhibited work extensively throughout Europe, Asia, Australia and the US.
Woodside is interested in bodies of work that focus on art and documentarian practices.
Sophie Wright has over 25 years experience working at the intersection of arts and business in management, strategy, sales, programming and curation. She worked at Magnum Photos from 2003 to 2020, leading their Cultural department internationally. She supported projects by photographers such as Elliott Erwitt, Bruce Davidson, Martin Parr and Susan Meiselas, while conceiving projects such as the Live Lab (a series of experimental residencies in London, Shenzhen, Paris and Moscow), placing significant bodies of work by Magnum photographers into museums such as the Tate Modern, Getty, MOMA and M+, and managing major book projects such Magnum Contact Sheets (2011) and Magnum China (2018) with Thames & Hudson.
From 2020 she worked as an independent consultant and mentored over 100 emerging photographers during the pandemic via her online programme Photochat. In 2021 she created workshop programmes with Leica and oversaw and co-curated the critically acclaimed exhibition 'America in Crisis', which opened at the Saatchi Gallery in London in January 2022 and toured to the American Museum in Bath in 2023. She is co-author of 'Light on the Riviera: The History of Photography on the Cote d’Azur' with Genevieve Janvrin (published by TeNeues, June 2022). She is on the Advisory Board of Photofairs New York and the Board of the Journal of Photography, Art and Culture.
Wright is open to reviewing all bodies of work.
Lucas Zenk has been with the Stephen Daiter Gallery since 2006 and has served as the gallery director for over ten years. Interested in visual media since he was a teenager, he first pursued film studies at University of Massachusetts, and then attended the New England School of Photography in Boston. He was a cultural department intern at Magnum Photos in New York which introduced him to the commercial and gallery aspects of the medium. Along with photography he enjoys camping, reading, and watching television. He lives in Berwyn, Illinois with his family.
Zenk is most interested in reviewing documentary, conceptual, and experimental work.
Yechen Zhao received his PhD in Art History from Stanford University, where he specialized in 1970s American photography. He has served as a visiting critic of photography for the Yale School of Art, and his writing has appeared in History of Photography and Aperture.
Zhao is open to seeing all well-made photographs.
You will be asked to submit your reviewer preferences in order from 1-12, 1 being who you would like to see the most. The date you register holds your place in line and priority is given to those who register early. Schedules will be released by late August / early September.
The best way to present your work is loose prints inside a clamshell portfolio box. Time is valuable while being reviewed and you want to be sure you can easily access each print and have the ability to edit as your review is being conducted.
A typical portfolio is comprised of tightly edited images in a project or series of 15-25 prints. Take into consideration what the final print size would be for exhibiting and if it is easy to carry and handle. You will be given a standard 6ft table to present your work to the reviewer and most people show prints between 11 x 14 to 20 x 24 inches.
FAQ
The best way to have the most success with your reviews is to practice and research. Be sure you are meeting with a reviewer who is interested in your work. A good way to ensure this is to read his or her bio, found on our reviewers’ page, and research what type of work they generally exhibit or publish. Be sure to allow enough time for the reviewer to critique and give advice.
To make the most out of your review you should plan to bring a business card, leave behind, or a promotional piece that has current contact information and an image from your project, or series, that is being reviewed. It is also important that this piece is easy for the reviewer to take with them and can easily fit in a standard folder or envelope. Bringing a pen and pad of paper is also very useful to take down information during your review.
Filter Photo Festival will be following all city, state, and CDC guidelines in regards to mitigating the spread of COVID-19. As these guidelines are updated, we will update our protocols. We will update attendees closer to the start of the Festival. Currently masks are optional.
You will be asked to submit your reviewer preferences in order from 1-12, 1 being who you would like to see the most. The date you register holds your place in line and priority is given to those who register early. Schedules will be released by late August / early September.
The best way to present your work is loose prints inside a clamshell portfolio box. Time is valuable while being reviewed and you want to be sure you can easily access each print and have the ability to edit as your review is being conducted.
A typical portfolio is comprised of tightly edited images in a project or series of 15-25 prints. Take into consideration what the final print size would be for exhibiting and if it is easy to carry and handle. You will be given a standard 6ft table to present your work to the reviewer and most people show prints between 11 x 14 to 20 x 24 inches.
The best way to have the most success with your reviews is to practice and research. Be sure you are meeting with a reviewer who is interested in your work. A good way to ensure this is to read his or her bio, found on our reviewers’ page, and research what type of work they generally exhibit or publish. Be sure to allow enough time for the reviewer to critique and give advice.
To make the most out of your review you should plan to bring a business card, leave behind, or a promotional piece that has current contact information and an image from your project, or series, that is being reviewed. It is also important that this piece is easy for the reviewer to take with them and can easily fit in a standard folder or envelope. Bringing a pen and pad of paper is also very useful to take down information during your review.
Filter Photo Festival will be following all city, state, and CDC guidelines in regards to mitigating the spread of COVID-19. As these guidelines are updated, we will update our protocols. We will update attendees closer to the start of the Festival. Currently masks are optional.