Monday, August 20, 2012

CRITICAL MASS 2012 FINALIST LIST


Our pre-screeners have completed their jurying and our programming has tallied the finalist list for Critical Mass 2012! List is below (including our international scholarship recipients), alphabetical by first name. 


THANK YOU to ALL who entered, there was such a great range of work this year. We appreciate you being part of the Critical Mass event, and the important thing is to keep doing the work and get it out there!



Curious as to what goes on behind the scenes in the pre-screening stage? Here is some perspective written last year on the process.



2012 Finalists

Aaron Vincent Elkaim
Adam Wiseman
Alejandro Medina
Alexei Krasnikov
Alinka Echeverria
Amiran White
Amy Friend
Andrew Emond
Andrew Fillmore
Ann Mansolino
Anne Berry
Annette Elizabeth Fournet
Arthur Drooker
Ashley Kauschinger
Aspen Hochhalter
Barbara Cuirej & Lindsay Lochman
Ben Huff
Benjamin Rasmussen
Benjamin Rusnak
Bob Avakian
Bob Miller
Bonnie Lammar
Boris Eldagsen
Brad Temkin
Brandon Thibodeaux
Brian Kaplan
Byron Marmol
Calli McCaw
Carlos Gonzalez
Carlos Loret de Mola
Carrie Will
Catharine Carter
Celestino Marco Cavalli
Christopher Capozziello
Christopher Colville
Christopher Dawson
Christopher Rauschenberg
Clarissa Bonet
Clay Lipsky
Daniel Chauche
David Pace
David Saxe
Deborah Bay
Denis Roussel
Deon Reynolds
Diana Matar
Dima Gavrysh
Dominic Turner
Donna J. Wan
Eben Ostby
Edie Fogel
Eleonora Ronconi
Elizabeth M. Claffey
Ellen Kok
Ellie Davies
Emma Powell
Enrico Fabian
Eric Lusito
Ernie Button
Eros Hoagland
Eseralda Ruiz
Forest McMullin
Francis Schanberger
Frank Lavalle
Freya Najade
Fritz Liedtke
Fyodor Savintsev
George McClintock
Glenna Gordon
Gloriann Liu
Greg Kahn
Hakan Strand
Haley Jane Samuelson
Haley Morris-Cafiero
Hannah Kozak
Heather Wetzel
Heidi Kirkpatrick
Heidi Lender
Ian van Coller
Ian Willms
Ikuru Kuwajima
Ilona Szwarc
JJ Estrada & Clara de Tezanos
Jacqueline Walters
Jade Doskow
Jamey Stillings
Jamie Tuttle
Jan Caga
Jana Romanova
Jason Brown
Jennifer Kaczmarek
Jenny Ellerbe
Jesse Rieser
Jimmy Lam
Jo Ann Walters
John Delaney
Jonathan Saruk
Jorge Luis Chavarria Aleman
Jose Diniz
Joseph O. Holmes
Judith Black
Julia Kozerski
June Yong Lee
K.K. DePaul
Kai Loffelbein
Kate Wilhelm
Kathleen Robbins
Katie Koti
Kendall Messick
Kent Krugh
Kitra Cahana
Kris Sanford
Kurt Simonson
Kyoko Hamada
Lara Shipley
Laura El- Tantawy
Laura Noel
Lauren Henkin
Lauren Semivan
Lee Saloutos
Lewis Francis
Lisette de Boisblanc
Lorenzo Triburgo
Lucia Herrero
Lydia Panas
Manuel Cosentino
Marilynne Morshead
Marina Font
Marjorie Salvaterra
Mark Parascandola
Martha Fleming-Ives
Mary Beth Meehan
Mary Ellen Bartley
Matt Eich
Maxine Helfman
Meike Nixdorf
Melanie Cleary
Michael Massaia
Michelle Sank
Mila Teshaieva
Misha Domozhilov
Monica Denevan
Monika Merva
Nadia Sablin
Nate Larson & Marni Shindelman
Nigel Gordon Dickinson
Noah David Bau
Ohm Phanphiroj
Patricia Lay-Dorsey
Paula Mc Cartney
Pelle Cass
Peter Blakely
Peter Liepke
Polly Chandler
Polly Gaillard
Priscilla Briggs
Rachel Papo
Rachelle Anayansi Mozman
Rafal Maleszyk
Reathel Geary
Rebecca Greenfield
Rich Frishman
Richard Tuschman
Robert Moran
Rodrigo Albert dos Santos
Roger Generazzo
Roopa Gogineni
Rubi Lebovitch
S. Gayle Stevens & Judy Sherrod
Samantha VanDeman
Santiago Vanegas
Sarah Cusimano Miles
Sarah Malakoff
Sarah Moore
Sol Neelman
Stan Raucher
Stephan Hillerbrand + Mary Magsamen
Steven Smith
Susan A. Barnett
Susan Bank
Sven Nieder
Svjetlana Tepavcevic
Tamara Reynolds
Tamas Dezso
Tami Bone
Tara Bogart
Tatyana Bessmertnaya
Terri Garland
Terri Warpinski
Thomas Alleman
Thomas Jackson
Tom Griggs
Tom Wik
Tony Fouhse
Toshiya Watanabe
Urszula Tarasiewicz
Vangelis Georgas
Victoria Crayhon
Vivian Keulards
William Scharf
Zhenjie Dong

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

A Brief Anthology of Critical Mass 2012 Submission Topics


The Critical Mass pre-screening crew is finishing up pre-screening this week, and traditionally I take this opportunity to loosely attempt to categorize the wide reach of content that emerging photographers are putting out into the world. What matters to people? How are people portraying ideas, traditional and conceptual? 

These are some of the trends (in the most positive sense of the word) that I jotted down during my pre-screening experience. Please note than no topic listed has any more weight than any other in Critical Mass - these are just across-the-board notations that I think give a window peek into topics photographers find relevant enough to create work around:

Specific international geographic places explored: Africa (Ethiopia Rwanda, Nigeria, Nairobi…), Korea, Iceland, Kabul, Romania, Greenland, Palestine, China, India, Mongolia, Nicaragua, Colombia, Morocco, Myanmar, Brazil, Yemen, Egypt, Cuba, Norway, Slovakia, Antarctica
Specific places in America explored: Pie Town (New Mexico), Salton Sea, Hawaii, Alaska, New York City, and quite a few on New Jersey!
General Geographic places explored:  “The West”, “The South”, “The Suburbs”, “The City”, “The Ocean”
Specific places explored: newspaper presses, old-age homes, movie theaters in Kabul, theater booths, hotels on brink of demolition, forest shrines, trailer park communities, Libyan torture sites, extreme hoarding environment site, Mexican border town, Alaska’s North Slope
References to other artists in statements, usually in an inspirational sense:  Robert Adams, Edward Weston, Ruth Bernhardt, Todd Hido, Alfred Steiglitz, Stephen Shore, Eugene Atget, Lee Friedlander, Minor White, Tina Barney, Martin Parr, Julia Margaret Cameron, Rembrandt
Projects with traditional photographic focus: self-portraiture, portraits of others, nudes, trees and forests, flowers, nighttime, clouds, county fairs, landscapes, oceanscapes
Projects that explore larger/abstract ideas: drying laundry, post-divorce life, the supernatural, reality, intimacy, suicide, heroin addiction, the urge to lose oneself, societal alienation, identity, totality of existence, life & death, memory, psychology of space, mental health, repressed emotions, guilt, Women and Pretending, five stages of grief to acceptance, color fields & spacial relationships, nostalgia, loneliness, fear of forgetting one’s personal history, life’s “in-between” moments, psychology of road trips, effects of economic recession, pattern alchemy, aggression
Projects that explore specific topics: chronic migraines, wrench typology, Tom Waits lyrics, colorblind-ness, polar bear swim, indie wrestling, election campaigns, meta data, teenagers at night, items from compost, struggling fashion models in their home environments, scans of diaper stains, waybills in 1970’s Castro district, the Last Supper, red-headed children, dogs in cars, photos of frozen cancerous tissue
Projects that show different societal trends or cultures:  those who love artificial life-like babies, motor home culture, facial tattoos, ‘American Girl’ doll culture, Junior ROTC, newspaper, world of politics, brides of Central Park, yoga, plastic surgery to conform to societal standards, ‘Occupy Wall Street’ activism, man’s relationship to the wolf, military service, wrestling communities, mono cultures, cultural genocide of the First Nations People, hunting culture, homeschooling communities, prison communities, people driving in cars on Rodeo Drive
Projects that look at aspects of sexuality/relationships: online strippers, gay & lesbian youth at prom, transgender portraits and communities, intercultural marriages, masculine identity, wearing dresses, sexual identity day vs. night, S & M world
Projects that look at environmental issues: several projects on polluted bodies of water, effects of the Japanese tsunami, clashes of man made environments and nature, deer as roadkill, global warming using Google Earth to show, development of rural areas
Projects that look at Family issues: unhappy childhoods, returning home, examining one’s affluent family, parents starting over, parents divorcing, parents growing old, parents dying, family dynamic with grandfather being on Death Row, motherhood, miscarriage, marriage, interior lives of children
Projects that look at loved ones or selves with disabilities – physical or mental:  borderline personality disorder, autism spectrum disorder, Asperger’s syndrome, dealing with internal growths, cancer, breast cancer, images that help cancer patients visualize light
Projects of various formats and mediums: diptychs, triptychs, hand sewn cross-stitches on ink jet prints, gunpowder explosions, wet-plate collodion, paint-based imagery, print-based imagery, vintage photography with light leaks through pinpricks, Polaroids, iPhone imagery, Google Earth, platinum/palladium, multi-medium collage

All of the work submitted to Critical Mass 2012 is recorded on DVD and copies sent to all who entered. It is our hope that people will utilize this record of Critical Mass to look at the work of their peers and think about how their own work fits into the larger survey of work being done at this point in time.
Next week: Finalist list will be announced!

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Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Guatemala! Critical Mass scholarships and GuatePhoto Call for Entries

 

Guatemala...what do we know about photography that is happening in Guatemala? Seemingly a long distance away both geographically and culturally, perhaps not so much... The remarkable work of Luis Gonzales Palma has been on the radar of the international photography world for a long time, and most absolutely deservedly so. But in addition to this, what else? 

As you may know, as part of Critical Mass, we extend a large handful of scholarships to photographers based in countries that may be flying under the radar, and whose work we think our Critical Mass jurors should see. In past years, scholarships have been given to photographers from Poland, Italy, Mexico, The Netherlands, and Georgia. This year, we are pleased to offer this opportunity to these select photographers from Guatemala - JJ Estrada & Clara de Tezanos, Daniel Chauche, Jorge Luis Chavarria Aleman, Alejandro Medina, and Bryon Marmol.


JJ Estrada & Clara de Tezanos


Daniel Chauche




Jorge Luis Chavarria Aleman







Alejandro Medina



Byron Marmol

AND...Guatemala's International Photography Festival GuatePhoto 2012, is promoting the exchange between photographers from all over the world and has an OPEN CALL for submissions - the winner will receive $3,000.00 in cash, a solo exhibition in the new gallery of La Fototeca, an all expenses paid trip to Guatemala to attend the inauguration of the festival and a seven page spread published in RARA magazine. For more information click here!

 

 

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