CM08: Update - more reasons to care

We're getting there. Afraid yesterday was spent in a black hole of traveling and no wifi, but today I've been back and forth a few times with our great Web guru and we'll be opening things up pretty soon. Might be today, might be tomorrow, but it shouldn't be any later than that. In any case, you'll have until October 6th to enter and this isn't like our in-person portfolio reviews- there is no cap on submissions. Bring 'em on.

In the meantime, a few more sneak peeks at a few of our confirmed reviewers:

Richard Renaldi, Tawnie, Havre, MT

Richard Renaldi, whose beautiful book Figure and Ground should definitely be on your wish list.

Lambros Papanikolatos, from the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography.

Bojan Radovic, from the Hisa Fotografije (House of Photography) in Slovenia.

Amy Stein, photo superstar, educator, and CM2006 Book Award winner.

Joanna Lehan, from Aperture. No need to say any more there, right? I mean, come on, it's Aperture.

Dana Faconti, from Blind Spot. Ditto.

Alexa Becker from Kehrer Verlag Publishers. Hmm, it seems worthy to note that Lisa Robinson's book Snowbound, published by Kehrer Verlag, was just named Photo Book of the Year at PHotoEspana. Congratulations Lisa. Robinson's project was one of our CM top 50 in 2006.

Speaking of, have you noticed how we've got a thumbnail list of our top 50 on the site, going back to the beginning of Critical Mass, in 2004? You might notice a lot of familiar names and projects. I'll go into more depth later, but what immediately strikes me is that I went to a great panel discussion at Aperture a couple nights ago about collecting photography. Among the work displayed and discussed, I remember seeing work by previous CM participants Nicole Jean Hill, Michal Chelbin, Molly Landreth, Amy Stein, and Brian Ulrich, among others.

Nicole Jean Hill, Fire Eyes

Not to mention that one of the panelists Amani Olu, founder of Humble and director of the Bond Street Gallery, is another of our confirmed reviewers. So is the discussion's moderator, Laurel Ptak, author of the great blog Iheartphotograph.

I could do this all day...