REGISTRATION
Join us for a Portfolio Review Weekend in Woodstock, May 18-19, plus Q&A on May 17. Elisabeth Biondi, Jesse Blatt, Clinton Cargill, Karen Davis, Hannah Frieser, Mary Goodwin, Julie Grahame, Charles Guice, Christy Havranek, Naomi Huth, Stephen Mallon, Jan Nagle, Ruben Natal-San Miguel, Cynthia Rivera and Mary Virginia Swanson.
MEET OUR REVIEWERS
ELISABETH BIONDI was the Visuals Editor of The New Yorker for 15 years until she left in 2011 to work as an independent curator, writer, and teacher. She curated Subjective/Objective and Under the Bridge for the New York PhotoFestival 2011, and New Yorker Fiction/Real Photography at Steven Kasher Gallery in Chelsea. In the fall of 2011 her exhibition Beyond Words: Photography in the New Yorker was the season’s opening show at the Howard Greenberg Gallery. An expanded version traveled to the Ullens Center in Beijing in 2012. Her exhibition Widely Different: New York City Panoramas was on view at the Seaport Museum, New York in 2012. Next she curated LIFT Off at the Fridman Gallery in New York and REFUGEE was on view at the Annenberg Center for Photography in Los Angeles. In 2017, she curated Farida, a Syrian Tale for the Museu da Imagen e do Som in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and most recently Lives & Still Lives, Leslie Gill and Francis McLaughlin Gill and their Circle at the Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York. Most recently she has been a judge in the eight-episodes Sky Arts ‘Master of Photography’, which aired May/June/July, 2018.
She teaches at SVA Graduate School for Photography and Related Media. Her column Portfolio is published in Photograph magazine. She was a juror for the World Press Photography Awards and the Sony World Photography Awards, in addition to numerous national and international photography juries and she participates in numerous portfolio reviews. She is one of the original founders of The Photography Master Retreat which takes place every year in the south of France. She also advises many up-and-coming photographers and edits their work.
Elisabeth Biondi joined The New Yorker in 1996, shortly after photography was introduced to the magazine. As Visuals Editor she helped shape the look of the publication by establishing a group of staff photographers, commissioning both masters and emerging talent. She built the magazine’s reputation for its use of photography, for which it received numerous awards, including two National Magazine Awards.
Born and educated in Germany, Elisabeth started working with photographers when Geo magazine, often described as a more contemporary and controversial version of National Geographic, launched in the US. The magazine won many awards for photography and design. Subsequently she moved to Vanity Fair, and as Director of Photography, focused on lively, witty portraiture – which became an important element of the magazine’s success. After seven years at Vanity Fair, Elisabeth returned to Germany to work for Stern, one of Germany’s largest newsweeklies. As head of the Photography Department, she explored the fast-paced world of news and reportage photography, and worked with celebrated photographers all around the world. In 1996, she then returned to New York to become Visuals Editor of The New Yorker.
JESSE BLATT is the owner of The J. Blatt Agency LLC, a boutique photography agency and production company specializing in the fine-art representation of portrait, reportage, fashion and music photography and the production of photography exhibitions and publication projects. Jesse also advises photographers on establishing and managing their archives and estates. Clients have included Annie Leibovitz, Denis Piel, Allan Tannenbaum, the Estate of Raymond Jacobs, Steven Klein, Walter Iooss, Robert Whitman, Elliott Landy and the Estate of Barry Feinstein. Prior to founding his company in 2012, Jesse worked as Annie Leibovitz’s in-house fine art producer and archivist for eight years. In addition to managing Leibovitz’s archive and fine-art print sales, Jesse produced her books At Work, Pilgrimage, and Taschen’s Sumo book, as well as Leibovitz’s touring museum exhibitions A Photographer’s Life: 1990-2005 and Pilgrimage. Jesse also produced many international gallery exhibitions and publications for Leibovitz, including collaborations with Vanity Fair, Vogue, and Rolling Stone. Recently, Jesse produced Denis Piel’s limited-edition monographDown To Earth and Allan Tannenbaum’s exhibition John and Yoko: A New York Love Story at K Gallery in St. Petersburg, Russia. He is currently producing Annie Leibovitz’s international touring lecture series,Portraits:2005-2016. Jesse also sits on the Board of Directors of The Center for Photography at Woodstock in Woodstock, New York and has contributed to L’Oeil de la Photographie. Jesse received aBFA in photography from Parsons School of Design.
CLINTON CARGILL is director of visuals at Vanity Fair. Previously he was the director of photography for Bloomberg Businessweek and Bloomberg Pursuits. During his time at Businessweek (2014-2018), the magazine’s photography was recognized by American Photography, Pictures of the Year International, Photo District News, the New York Press Club, and, for the first time, as a finalist for a national magazine award in feature photography. Before joining Businessweek, he was a photo editor at The New York Times Magazine, where he worked from 2004 – 2014. (Photograph by Kathy Ryan)
KAREN DAVIS is co-owner/curator of the Davis Orton Gallery in Hudson, NY. The Gallery, in its eighth year, exhibits photography, mixed media and photobooks by emerging, mid- career and established artists. Most exhibitions also showcase portfolios by two additional photographers selected through competition.
As curator for the Davis Orton Gallery, Karen is interested in seeing a wide range of fine art and documentary work employing conventional, alternative and mixed-media processes –all of which reflect her gallery’s broad view. Within this wide range, she includes subjects related to identity, race and social justice. She would be delighted to encounter potential exhibitors for her gallery. Karen is glad to see work in progress as well as completed and can offer guidance on portfolio development and finding an audience. She teaches “Portfolio Development and Marketing Your Fine Art Photography” at the Griffin Museum of Photography (online) and at the Davis Orton Gallery. She has been a portfolio reviewer at PhotoFest, CPW, Photolucida, Critical Mass, SPE conference, and the New England Portfolio Reviews. Her photographs are in the collections of the CPW/Dorsky Museum, Lishui Museum of Photography (China) and are featured at MASS MoCA. Her books are in the collections of the Houghton Library, Harvard University, the Lishui Museum of Photography and the In die Photobook Library. In 2009 she received the CPW Artist Fellowship Award and is a NYFA MARK 2011 artist.
HANNAH FRIESER is the executive director for the Center for Photography at Woodstock, an arts organization that features exhibitions, workshops and residencies. She has curated numerous exhibitions with leading contemporary photographers. Her essays have been featured in publications and monographs, such as Contact Sheet, Exposure, and Nueva Luz. For nine years, Hannah was director of Light Work, a photographic arts organization with exhibition and residency programs in Syracuse, New York. Hannah has reviewed portfolios and juried exhibitions worldwide for FotoFest, En Foco, Rhubarb Rhubarb, PhotoVisa, folioPORT and FotoTriennale.dk, among others. Together with gallerist Charles Guice, she is developing an initiative that will promote dialogue about contemporary photography, its practitioners and innovative exhibitions from an international perspective. Hannah is especially interested in reviewing work by photographers, who understand their intentions as artists. She is looking for artists for possible inclusion in future CPW projects. (Photograph by Charles Guice)
JULIE GRAHAME is a photography consultant and curator who has been in the industry for more than 25 years. In 1992 Julie moved from London to New York to run an international photo agency representing 400+ photographers. After leaving in 2006 she took on the archive of Yousuf Karsh to continue clearing rights for his iconic photographs. Grahame edits, writes and publishes aCurator magazine, and aCurator blog, which was cited both by the British Journal of Photography and LIFE in their reviews of influencers and taste-makers. For two years she was associate director at ClampArt fine art gallery. Julie now consults and reviews work for photographers of all levels and styles. (Photograph by Michael Putland)
MARY GOODWIN is the publisher at Waltz Books (www.waltzbooks.com), which has published books by Keliy Anderson-Staley, John Gossage, and Adam Ekberg. She is looking for projects that require a close relationship between the book format and the photographic image. Mary (www.marygoodwin.net) lives and works in Indianapolis, Indiana.
KATHY GREENWOOD is the Director of the Art & Culture Program at Albany International Airport (albanyairport.com) – a public art program recognized nationally for the quality and scope of its presentations. Greenwood develops exhibitions for the Airport’s dedicated gallery spaces, guides the selection and installation of numerous large-scale site specific projects throughout the terminal, coordinates multiple satellite museum exhibitions and oversees Departure: The Shop of Capital Region Museums, a retail enterprise that extends the Art & Culture Program’s support of regional museums and artisans. Greenwood was appointed Director in 2016, after serving as the Art & Culture Program’s Curatorial Assistant since 2002. She has been a guest speaker, juror and contributor to many public exhibitions and events. Greenwood earned an MFA in textiles from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her experience as a practicing artist contributes to her curatorial practice by supplying an inside-view of the creative process that fosters long-term community relationships and visually dynamic installations.
CHARLES GUICE is an art advisor, curator, mentor, and writer. Recognised for developing new talent as well as for advancing more established artists, he has been instrumental in the careers of a number of today’s leading contemporary visual artists including Max de Esteban, Erika Diettes, Hank Willis Thomas and Carrie Mae Weems. As a gallerist, Guice placed works in prominent private and public collections throughout the United States and abroad, including The Brooklyn Museum, The J. Paul Getty Museum, The High Museum of Art, The International Center of Photography and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. A former healthcare executive, he has served on the Boards of Trustees for the California College of the Arts and The Museum of the African Diaspora, and was a founding member of the nominating committee for the Aperture West Book Prize. Guice has curated a number of exhibitions throughout the U.S., and was a principal, managing director and co-curator for Photo Miami.
He has been an invited juror for CENTER, The Center for Fine Art Photography and PDN, as well as a frequent portfolio reviewer at ASMP, Atlanta Celebrates Photography, the Center for Photography at Woodstock, En Foco, FotoFest, the New York Times Portfolio Reviews, Photolucida, photoNOLA and Review Santa Fe. (Photograph by Doug Menuez)
CHRISTY HAVRANEK is the Photo Director at HuffPost, where she oversees a team of photo editors and photographers. She has over 18 years of experience in the photo business, having worked at NBCUniversal, Frommer’s Travel, and Polo Ralph Lauren, among others. She recently was a juror for the Lenscratch exhibit Good Manners, the 2018 LensCulture Street Photography Awards, and Photolucida Critical Mass. In February 2019, Christy will appear alongside industry colleagues at the Turchin Center for Visual Arts to discuss contemporary photography and its role in creating a more just and equitable society. She prides herself in being an editorial mentor with Women Photograph for 2018-2019. HuffPost assigns photographers to cover a variety of national and international topics — from breaking news to long-form enterprise pieces — and licenses existing photo series to feature on its global platform.
Christy would like to see narrative-driven editorial/documentary work as well as fine art projects that fit an editorial audience. Of particular interest is work focused on underrepresented communities, race, gender, class, climate issues and how they all intersect. She would prefer not to see travel, nudes, fashion, commercial.
NAOMI HUTH is a New York-based curator and writer. She is the Curator and Senior Collections Manager for the Joseph M. Cohen Family Collection, a large private collection based in New York City and The Hamptons, New York and Boca Raton, Florida. Previously, Huth worked at the New Museum managing artist residencies with Wu Tsang, Public Movement, and CAMP serving as a fellow in the curatorial department on exhibitions including the Ungovernables Triennial with Eungie Joo. In 2013, Huth worked with Travis Chamberlain on NEA 4 in Residence, a two-part, multi-artist performance residency and research project in conjunction with the exhibition NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star and IDEAS CITY 2013. This series included ten programs, an exhibition, several workshops, panels, and performances. In 2010, she developed several public engagement initiatives at the Museum of Arts and Design, including a series of panel discussions and artist lectures coinciding with the Global Africa Project, curated by Lowery Stokes Sims and Leslie King-Hammond, and Blood into Gold: The Cinematic Alchemy of Alejandro Jodorowsky. In 2009, Huth curated a nine-week Lunch Matters film series at the Rubin Museum of Art focusing on food in the Himalayan region. Huth received her M.A. in Art History and Museum Studies from the City College of New York and her B.S. in Fashion Design and Art History from Drexel University.
STEPHEN MALLON is a photographer and filmmaker who specializes in the industrial-scale creations of mankind at unusual moments of their life cycles. He has been a juror and portfolio reviewer for Scholastic, ASMP, B&H, and American Photo in the past. He has also served as thesis advisor at the School of Visual Arts along with currently teaching photography at the Miami Ad School.
Mallon has been a board member of the New York chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers since 2002 and served as president from 2006 to 2009.
His photography blurs the line between documentary and fine art, revealing the industrial landscape to be unnatural, desolate and functional yet simultaneously also human, surprising and inspiring. It has been featured in publications and by broadcasters including The New York Times, National Geographic, NBC, The Wall Street Journal, The Daily Mail, MSNBC, The Atlantic, GQ, CBS, the London Times and Vanity Fair. Mallon has exhibited in cities including Miami, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, St. Louis and New York, as well is in England and Italy.
In 2009, Mallon produced Brace for Impact: The Salvage of Flight 1549, a series of photographs recorded the salvaging of the passenger aircraft which captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger landed on the Hudson River. In 2010, his solo exhibition Next Stop Atlantic documented the disposal of New York subway trains at sea to form artificial coral reefs. He was commissioned by the New York Times Magazine to shoot the film Behind The Curtain, a time lapse movie documenting two days behind the scenes of the Metropolitan Opera in 2013. As David Schonauer wrote in Pro Photo Daily, “Mallon’s word harkens back to the heroic industrial landscapes of Margaret Bourke-White and Charles Sheeler, who glorified American steel and found art in its industrial muscle and smoke during the Great Depression.” He has also been compared to photographers including Edward Burtynsky, Thomas Struth and Chris Jordan.
Mallon is currently working on his first curatorial project, a group show titled What Could Possibly Go Wrong opening May 2019 in Hudson, NY. Mallon is represented by Front Room Gallery in New York and periodically recommends work to the gallery. (Photograph by Beowulf Sheehan)
As CPW’s Program Manager, JAN NAGLE works to implement the organization’s year-round program offerings, including exhibitions, artist workspace residencies, and more. She is a nationally exhibited fine artist with works in several public and private collections, including Light Work and the Burchfield Penney Art Center. Jan’s multidisciplinary art practice includes photography, film/video, installation, and collage; her work is about place, and how it informs identity. Jan has held full-time faculty positions at the School of Art and Design at Alfred University, Kendall College of Art and Design and more. She holds a BFA in Photography from SUNY New Paltz, and an MFA from SUNY Buffalo.
RUBEN NATAL-SAN MIGUEL is an architect, fine art photographer, curator, creative director and critic. His stature in the photo world has earned him awards, features in major media, countless exhibitions and collaborations with photo icons such as Magnum Photographer Susan Meiselas. Gallery shows include: Asya Geisberg, SoHo Photo, Rush Arts, Finch & Ada, Kris Graves Projects, Fuchs Projects, WhiteBox Gallery, Station Independent Projects Gallery and others. His work has been featured in numerous institutions: The New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Griffin Museum of Photography, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, African American Museum of Philadelphia, The Makeshift Museum in Los Angeles, University of Washington, El Museo del Barrio and Phillips Auction House. International art fair representation includes: Outsider Art Fair, SCOPE, PULSE, Art Chicago, Zona Maco, Mexico, Lima Photo, Peru and Photo LA. and Filter Photo Festival in Chicago Ill. His photography has been published in a long list of publications, highlights: New York Magazine, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Time OUT, Aperture, Daily News, OUT, American Photo, ARTFORUM, VICE, Musee, ARTnet and The New Yorker. In 2016 Ruben’s Marcy’s Playground was selected for both the Billboard Collective and website for Apple. His photographs are in the permanent collections of El Museo Del Barrio in NYC, The Center for Photography at Woodstock, NY, The Contemporary Collection of the Mint Museum Charlotte, North Carolina , The Bronx Museum for the Arts, School of Visual Arts, NYC and The Museum of The City of NY.
CYNTHIA RIVERA is an artist and photographer who has been the Exhibition Coordinator at the Bronx Documentary Center (BDC) since 2016. She graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology with a BFA in Photography and minor in art history. Besides curating exhibits, she handmakes photo/art books, specializing in works with social justice themes. Originally from Manhattan’s Lower East Side, she now resides in the South Bronx.
While at the BDC, Rivera has been involved in the design and production of several significant exhibitions. In 2016 New Documents displayed historic works of citizen journalism ranging from the early 1900’s up until the “viral” livestream videos of today such as the shooting death of Philando Castile by a Minnesota police officer. The Latin American Foto Festival—New York City’s first—in 2018, featured work from over a dozen photographers in 9 exhibitions. War And Peace In Liberia highlighted the 15th anniversary of efforts by the United Nations Peacekeepers to stop civil warfare in Liberia. The exhibition featured the work of photographers Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, who were both killed in 2011 by artillery in Misurata, Libya. This show attracted worldwide media attention including a feature by Ted Koppel on CBS Sunday Morning.
While at the BDC, Rivera has designed, co-curated, printed, and produced numerous exhibitions, including Not Forgotten: An Arkansas Family Album, New Documents, Spanish Harlem: El Barrio In The 80’s, Journeys: Immigration Stories, Flint Is A Place, Attacks On The Press: Mexico, and War And Peace In Liberia.
MIRIAM ROMAIS – Independent Curator. Miriam Romais is a Brazilian-American arts professional, with 20+ years of experience in marketing, strategy and development. She is an advisor, leader, strategic alchemist, curator and photographer. As a reviewer and workshop leader, she has worked with the Tang Museum/Skidmore College, FotoFest, Photoville, FotoWeek DC, PhotoNOLA, NYS Council on the Arts, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Photolucida, Photoville, NoMAA and others. As a curator, Romais has created exhibitions for Aperture, Light Work, BRIC Arts Media, and dozens for En Foco, Inc. Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the U.S., such as El Museo del Barrio, Museum of the City of NY and the Smithsonian Institution, and published in Photo District News (Aug 2016), Taproot Magazine, and Americanos: Latino Life in the U.S. She is a recipient of Saratoga Arts’ 2016 Individual Artist Grant, with prior awards from the Puffin Foundation and Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation. (Photograph by Chris Connelly)
MARY VIRGINIA SWANSON is an innovator, educator, author, advisor and entrepreneur in the field of photography. Ms. Swanson counts among her consulting clients internationally known artists and respected arts organizations. Unique among advisors in our field, her broad background and professional reputation offers a broad range of perspectives on both the making and marketing of art. After receiving her MFA in Photography (Arizona State University, 1979) Ms. Swanson directed educational programs for The Friends of Photography including the Ansel Adams Workshop, headed special projects at Magnum Photos, established a summer educational institute at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and in 1991 founded SWANSTOCK, an innovative photo agency that managed licensing rights for fine art photographers. During her career she has coordinated educational, exhibition and publication programs for a wide range of institutions and organizations. Her seminars, workshops and lectures on trends and opportunities in photography have aided countless photographers in moving their careers to the next level. http://mvswanson.com/ (Photograph by Stefan Wachs)
Reminder: The 2019 Woodstock Portfolio Reviews will take place over the weekend, May 17-19. Please visit the event page for details. Need some assistance on how to prepare? Check out our FAQ page Need a place to stay? Check out nearby options.