Explore Panels By Creative Discipline

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Photography

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Previous Photography Panelists

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  • 2025 Panelist
    Charles Lee is a Cleveland-based interdisciplinary artist and photographer. His work has been exhibited widely, including solo shows at SF Camerawork and the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art. His photos have been published in the British Journal of Photography and Mother Jones Magazine. Lee received his MFA degree, with honors, from California College of the Arts in 2023.

Charles Lee

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  • 2025 Panelist
    Alex Landry, a New Orleans native, earned a BA in art history and sculpture and an MA from Tulane University. She has held curatorial roles at Newcomb Art Museum and Asheville Art Museum and now works as a curatorial assistant in photography at SFMOMA, focusing on queer narratives and sustainable art-making.

Alex Landry

Black and white portrait of a man with dark hair, wearing a dark collared shirt, looking directly at the camera with a serious expression.

  • 2025 Panelist
    Andrew Owen is a photographer living and working in San Francisco. His current project, In Light Years, is an exploration of the California landscape in the era of extreme weather. Andrew was formerly the Managing Director of the LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph, a National Geographic Young Explorer, Creative Editor at Instagram, and community-builder for tech startups. His newest obsession is crafting handmade photo books.

Andrew Owen

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  • 2025 Panelist
    J. John Priola is a contemporary visual artist specializing in photography and video, known for his refined presentation and print quality. His work has been featured in exhibitions like In A Different Light: Visual Culture, Sexual Identity, Queer Practice at the Berkeley Art Museum and Picturing Eden, a five-year traveling show. His pieces are held in major collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Ron Moultrie Saunders

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  • 2025 Panelist
    The Executive Director of SF Camerawork, Renaikha Cruz Fermin is a first generation Latinx Artist-Administrator. She attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for Visual Arts under a Merit Scholarship and has worked for the Tacoma Art Museum, The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and SFMOMA. She is deeply involved with the vibrant art community in the Bay Area as an avid supporter and cultivator of social-creative events, with a focus on the historic Bayview-Hunter's Point neighborhood where she resides.

J. John Priola

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  • 2023, 2024, 2025 Panelist
    Ron is a San Francisco-based photographic artist, public artist, landscape architect and teacher. His work is in the San Francisco Arts Commission Civic Art Collection and he completed two commissions for BART in 2023. Ron's work has been exhibited in museums and galleries across the US. He is currently on the board for First Exposures, which strives to empower youth through photography, and Black [Space] Residency located in the Minnesota Street Projects in San Francisco.

Renaikha Cruz Fermin

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  • 2023, 2024 Panelist
    Rohan DaCosta is a multidisciplinary artist from Chicago and based in Oakland. He is a published author, photographer, and arts curator. Rohan currently produces an interview series title, Playdate, spotlighting artists and entrepreneurs in the Bay Area.

Rohan DaCosta

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  • 2024 Panelist
    Lucy is a photographer and educator who coordinates commissions in the editorial and publishing realms alongside her self-initiated, fine art projects. She also runs workshops that focus on creativity and awareness and coaches photographers privately. Lucy's passion lies ever-rooted in the desire to capture the unseen, the overlooked and the fundamentally forgotten in all aspects of life, both literally and metaphorically.

Lucy Goodhart

Black and white portrait of a woman with very short hair, smiling softly, with a background of bokeh lights.

  • 2023, 2024 Panelist
    Aneeta is a visual artist using photography, film, and new media to interrogate concepts of identity, visibility, and political complacency. They have been an artist resident at More Art and a fellow at Brooklyn Community Pride Center. Their work has been exhibited at Flux Gallery, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the MIT List Visual Arts Center, as well as, film festivals in the U.S. and abroad. Currently, they are the Public Programs and Digital Strategies Manager for First Exposures, a San Francisco youth photography mentoring program.

Aneeta Mitha

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  • 2022, 2023, 2024 Panelist
    John received his B.F.A. in Photography from the University of Utah, and his M.F.A. in Photography from the California College of the Arts. The Pilara Foundation in San Francisco commissioned his work included in group exhibitions at Pier 24 Photography. John's work is in the permanent collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, CA; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; San Jose Museum of Art, CA; and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA. John Chiara: California, a monographic publication of his work, was published by Aperture Books in 2017.

John Chiara

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  • 2024 Panelist
    Aspen is an Associate Professor and Chair of Photography at the California College of the Arts. She received her B.A. in Anthropology and Spanish from The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and her M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Aspen is represented by Higher Pictures in New York, and recent honors include a 2021 Purchase Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She was also a Fulbright Scholar in Santiago, Chile, where she spent time with astrophysicists using the world's most advanced telescopes to look at the sky, an experience that has made a lasting impact on her work.

Aspen Mays

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  • 2021, 2022 Panelist
    Misha Bruk realized that photography truly captured his heart and imagination as he was about to graduate with a degree in architecture from UC Berkeley. His clients include many high profile institutions, magazines, real estate agencies as well as personal photography. Misha loves creating beautiful images that capture an essence and invite experiences of unexpected opening and inspiration.

Misha Bruk

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  • 2022, 2023 Panelist
    Chris Gould studied at the San Francisco Art Institute and works in the black and white analog tradition. He has worked at the Harvey Milk Photo Center for 3 years, currently teaching Part One and Part Two of the Black and White Photography and Darkroom class. Chris has enjoyed taking pictures since he was a little kid.

Chris Gould

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Ellen Shershow

  • 2022, 2023 Panelist
    Ellen Shershow is a commercial and fine arts photographer based in Oakland, CA. She has been profiled about her pet portraiture on NPR's Marketplace, LA Magazine and Slate, and spoke at Today at Apple as part of Apple's photo lab. Ellen continues to hone her own art practice through residencies and is currently working on a book about senior dogs.

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  • 2022, 2023 Panelist
    Heather Snider is a curator, writer, and consultant with 30 years of experience in the fine art photography field. She began her career at Vision Gallery in San Francisco, and has also worked as an art instructor for CYO youth programs San Francisco, the Arts Committee Chair for the Chinese Immersion School in San Francisco, Director at Scott Nichols Gallery, and Executive Director of SF Camerawork. Heather believes that awards that publicly recognize youth for their artistic achievements play a critical role in supporting and encouraging the artists and creative thinkers of tomorrow.

Heather Snider