Cesar Castro
Community Engagement Coordinator
cesar@cpw.org
In his role as Community Engagement Coordinator, Cesar will work with our partners and friends to organize classes, workshops, and public events. A New York-based artist, teacher, and fabricator, Cesar has worked as Scenic Supervisor for choreographer Jonah Bokaer and as Fabrication Director for artist Daniel Arsham. He is the co-founder of Flower Shop Collective, a Brooklyn-based art studio and educational hub that supports emerging artists focused on equitable futures. In 2019, he trained with fabricators at the Ateliers d’Art de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux — Grand Palais in Paris. His work blends decolonial remembrance with ancestral connections, reinterpreting pre-Hispanic traditions. Through painting and sculpture, he uses mythological figures and a distinct palette to explore memory and cultural empowerment.
Marina Chao
Curator
marina@cpw.org
Marina Chao has previously held curatorial positions at the International Center of Photography and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. As assistant curator at ICP she organized the exhibition Multiply, Identify, Her (2018) and contributed to the publication Public, Private, Secret: On Photography and the Configuration of Self (Aperture and ICP, 2018). 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.
Sarrah Danziger
Education Program Manager
education@cpw.org
Sarrah Danziger is an artist and educator based in Kingston, NY. She received her BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York and went on to work professionally as a photographer for over 10 years in New Orleans before relocating back to the Hudson Valley to work with CPW. She created, Listen to New Orleans, a psychogeographic oral history archive, artist book, and long-term public installation exploring lesser known histories of long term New Orleans residents, and has exhibited at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans; Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans; and at the New Orleans Photo Alliance. Her work as an artist primarily focuses on community-based collaboration and individual storytelling, positioning her well to expand CPW’s integrative partnerships and educational programming in the region.
Jackson Porter Hardin
Book Press Coordinator
bookpress@cpw.org
Jackson Porter Hardin is a Hudson Valley artist and educator working to make sense of humanity as an ecological condition. His practice incorporates a variety of photographic processes, book arts, archival images, and environmental writing. His current work engages with grieving ecological loss as a catalyst for connection, and how those points of tension are mirrored between the body and landscape. His work has been exhibited by Red Barn Gallery, the Society for Photographic Education (SPE), and Humble Arts Foundation. He holds a BA in Media Studies from Vassar College and earned an MFA in Photography and Related Media from SUNY New Paltz in 2022. Hardin works professionally as a photographer and teaches photography at Ramapo College in New Jersey. He serves as the Book Press Coordinator, leads and assists various workshops, and provides darkroom instruction at CPW.
Nicole Leonardo
Education Assistant
nicole@cpw.org
Nicole Leonardo is an artist based in the Hudson Valley. She received her BFA in Photography from SUNY New Paltz. In 2020, she began interning at CPW and later joined the staff. Nicole currently assists with CPW’s day-to-day operations as well as educational programming. She helps run our Thursday night Meet the Artist series, summer workshops, events, and CPW’s artist residency program, Woodstock AIR.
Reyna Martinez
Operations and Development Coordinator
reyna@cpw.org
Reyna Martinez is a locally based artist who graduated college in 2024 with a Bachelor of Arts in Photography with a concentration in Latin American and Iberian Studies from Bard College. Later that year she joined CPW as a Program Assistant for Sanctuary City: Stories of Immigration and Community, led by local artist Wendy Ewald. She now joins the Operations and Development teams, where she will help enhance visitor engagement and strengthen the CPW membership community.
Liz Ruffa
Director of Development
liz@cpw.org
Liz Ruffa is a marketing and philanthropy specialist with expertise in managing growth trajectories for mission-driven organizations. Her sectors of focus include the arts, the environment, and community development. From 1985-2000, Liz was a performing arts producer, agent, and consultant in New York City, before relocating to Vermont to raise her family. Since 2014, Liz has held leadership positions at Vermont Arts Council, Vermont Farm to Plate Network, Merck Forest & Farmland Center, Common Good VT and Northshire Grows, focusing on around capacity building, network development, and advancement services. Liz has extensive regional food systems and both local and statewide board governance experience. She is thrilled to join the CPW team.
Ryan Rusiecki
Print Coordinator
print@cpw.org
Ryan Rusiecki is an artist living and working in Kingston, NY. His practice exists at the intersection between photography, ecology, and history. He is currently working on a project which probes the maritime and nautical cultures that have shaped the Hudson River. His work has been exhibited at the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Colony and was most recently included in an exhibition at 100 Lagoon Pond in Martha’s Vineyard. In addition to his own practice, Ryan works as a project manager for various artists in the Hudson Valley and NYC.
Adam Ryan
Curator
agryan@cpw.org
Adam Ryan is a photography specialist and curator based in Poughkeepsie, New York. He gained experience working at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where he focused on the museum’s permanent collection of photographs, while also managing its Collection Study Center. He collaborated on multiple exhibitions such as Japanese Photography from Post War to Now, Selections from the Sack Photographic Trust, and Nothing Stable Under Heaven. Before that, he worked in the Photography Department of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where his primary focus was a major retrospective on the work of renowned artist Duane Michals – Storyteller: The Photographs of Duane Michals. As a student, he learned photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology and continued into graduate school at Toronto Metropolitan University in Toronto, Canada.
Alicia Schirrmeister
Digital Media Lab Assistant
labs@cpw.org
Alicia Schirrmeister is assisting in our Digital Media Lab, supporting CPW members with digital editing, printing, and scanning. Additionally, they will assist Sarrah Danziger, (CPW Education Program Manager), with educational programming and technological initiatives, exploring new ways to optimize and expand the lab’s resources and services. Alicia has worked professionally for artists and art institutions for the last six years with a focus on digital consulting, archiving, research, and artwork reproduction. Their personal photographic practice examines the singularity between the self and the environment. Alicia holds a BFA from Reed College in Portland, Oregon, and has recently relocated from their hometown, New York City, to Kingston, New York. You can find them in our Digital Media Lab.
Anna Van Lenten
Communications Coordinator
anna@cpw.org
Anna Van Lenten ran the bimonthly Half King Photography Series in New York City from 2010 to 2019. There, she presented over 70 print exhibits, book launches, & pop-up screenings. In 2016, she founded LightField, a bi-annual photo festival that aims to use the power of visual art to illuminate social and environmental issues. LightField is planning its 2024/25 edition now. She has also produced two multi-media exhibits about post-Snowden corporate and state surveillance (Surveillance.01 in NYC, and Surveillance.02 in Dubai). In May, 2018, she earned an MFA in fiction from The New School. Van Lenten’s piece about Gerda Taro & Lee Miller appeared in Musee Magazine’s Women issue.
Brian Wallis
Executive Director
brian@cpw.org
Brian Wallis was Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York from 2000 to 2015. Under his leadership, ICP presented more than 150 exhibitions and installations, including Only Skin Deep: Visions of the American Self; African American Vernacular Photography; Strangers: The First ICP Triennial of Photography and Video; and Weegee: Murder Is My Business. Before joining ICP, Wallis worked at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the New Museum of Contemporary Art. More recently, Wallis worked as curator for The Walther Collection, a museum of photography with facilities in New York and Neu Ulm, Germany, where he oversaw numerous exhibitions, including Imagining Everyday Life: Encounters with Vernacular Photography, awarded the Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation prize for Photography Catalogue of the Year in 2020.