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

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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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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