April 1, 2021
FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHER - RUTH VAN BEEK

PhotoAlliance is delighted to welcome back photographer Ruth Van Beek for an online lecture and presentation of her unique practice and current work. In December 2016, Ruth Van Beek gave a lecture with PhotoAlliance introducing her wonderfully enigmatic collages, and we are looking forward to catching up with her again, this time via Zoom from her studio in the Netherlands.

Ruth Van Beek is widely admired for her inventive and enchanting photographic collages, in which oddly endearing abstract forms take on a life-like presence. Her works on paper combine fragments of painted color washes and cut-outs with images from the artist’s collection of printed archival materials. With skill and playful intuition, Van Beek creates a world of anthropomorphic abstractions that teeter between the toylike and monstrous, enlivened with a joyful use of color and careful attention to how conventions of photographic rendering can blend fantasy and reality.

For the lecture with PhotoAlliance, Van Beek will share selections from several recent series of work, including The Nursery, exhibited earlier this year at the Ravestijn Gallery, Amsterdam. In this series, Van Beek embodied her constructed figures through careful study of dolls and pictures of dolls. Mining her growing personal archive of doll imagery for inspiration, she looked for similarities in construction, size and appearance while also tapping into how metaphor, psychology, and the imagination are implicated in doll play. The Nursery builds upon Van Beek’s previous series, How To Do The Flowers, inspired by images the artist found in an online archive: the Seed and Nursery Catalogs Collection, itself part of an extensive Archive of Biodiversity. How To Do The Flowers is an absurdist manual of strange instructions and unfinished collages which address the physicality and animation of lifeless matter that has played an increasingly important role in her work.

We invite you to join us for this opportunity to spend some time with Ruth Van Beek, to catch up with her work and practice over the last few years, and to share the inspiration in her highly creative approach to the materials of photography.

Ruth van Beek’s work has been shown internationally at the likes of FOMU (BE); ETAL Gallery, (US); The Ravestijn Gallery (NL); Les Rencontres d’Arles (FR); Flowers Gallery (UK) and Fraenkel Gallery (US) amongst others. Her work has been featured in magazines such as Centrefold Magazine, Foam Magazine, IMA Magazine, The British Journal of Photography, The Aperture Photobook Review, Financial Times, Elephant Magazine and The New York Times.

She has published numerous artist books including The Arrangement (2013) which was shortlisted for the Aperture Photobook of the Year Award in 2014, and How To Do The Flowers (2018), co-published by Art Paper Editions (BE) and Dashwood Books (US) to widespread acclaim. Her most recent book, Eldorado, made in collaboration with Willem Van Zoetendaal and published by Van Zoetendaal Publishers, is available for purchase HERE.

PhotoAlliance has one Ruth Van Beek print available through our collector print program, click HERE for more information. (20% discount for April only)

MARCH 1, 2021
FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHER - KIRK CRIPPENS

Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Kirk Crippens has been photographing since he was a child. Crippens began exhibiting in the United States in 2008, and internationally in 2011. In addition to other institutions and collections, his prints are held by the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, Texas; the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas and the Oakland Museum of Art, Oakland, California. In addition to many others, his work has been shown in the National Portrait Gallery, London; Stanford University, Palo Alto, California; the Datz Museum, Gwangju, South Korea; the National Portrait Gallery, Scotland; and Pingyao International Photo Festival, Pingyao, China, where he exhibited in 2012 and 2015 and began his curatorial career in 2016. His first book, Live Burls, was published in 2017 by Schilt Publishing. His second book, Going South - Big Sur, released in 2019, was also published by Schilt. His photographs are represented in the United Stated by the SFMOMA Artists Gallery and in Europe by Schilt Gallery, Amsterdam.

PhotoAlliance has one remaining Kirk Crippens print available through our collector print program, click HERE for more information.

FEBRUARY 7, 2021
FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHER - ELIJAH GOWIN

Elijah Gowin uses photography to speak about ritual, landscape and memory. He was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1967 and received his MFA in Photography from the University of New Mexico. His photographs are in the collection of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Center for Creative Photography, among others. His awards include the John S. Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008 as well as grants from the Charlotte Street Foundation and the Puffin Foundation. He founded Tin Roof Press to publish his books on art and photography including “Maggie” in 2009 and his monograph "Of Falling and Floating" in 2011. Presently, he is a Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Missouri-Kansas City where he directs photographic studies. Gowin is represented by the Robert Mann Gallery (New York), Page Bond Gallery (Richmond, VA) and PGI (Tokyo). Visit Elijah’s website here.

PhotoAlliance has one remaining Elijah Gowin print available through our collector print program, click here for more information.

JANUARY 18, 2021
FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHER - DAVID LIITTSCHWAGER

David Liittschwager is a freelance photographer who grew up in Eugene, Oregon. Between 1983 and 1986, he worked as an assistant to Richard Avedon in New York City. After working in advertising, he turned his skills to portraiture with an emphasis on natural history subjects.

Now a contributing photographer to National Geographic and other magazines, Liittschwager is also a successful book author. In 2002 he produced the books Skulls and X-Ray Ichthyology: The Structure of Fishes for the California Academy of Sciences. Liittschwager’s books in collaboration with Susan Middleton include Archipelago, Remains of a Rainbow, Witness, and Here Today.

Recipient of an Endangered Species Coalition Champion Award for Education and Outreach and a Bay & Paul Foundation Biodiversity Leadership Award, Liittschwager lectures and shows his work in both fine art and natural history contexts. His photographs have been exhibited at many museums, including the American Museum of Natural History in New York City; the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.; the Honolulu Academy of Art in Hawaii; and currently at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.

Liittschwager was honored with a 2008 World Press Photo Award for his article on marine microfauna, which appeared in the November 2007 issue of National Geographic magazine. He lives in San Francisco.

JANUARY 11, 2021
FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHER - MARTIN CHAMBI

Martín Chambi was from the Peruvian Andes, from a town called Coaza, Carabaya district near Lake Titikaka in the department of Puno. He was born on November 5, 1891.

After his first contact with photography in the gold mine where his father worked, the Santo Domingo Mining Company, he traveled to Arequipa where he learned the trade from his teacher and guide Don Max T. Vargas , after learning and practicing in the workshops of the Portal de Flores de la Plaza de Armas, ended his stay in Arequipa exhibiting, thanks to the patronage of his teacher in the Artistic Center of that city on October 12, 1917.

In the following months, he traveled with his wife Manuela López Visa and their children Celia and Víctor to the city of Sicuani where he set up his own first Studio and workshop. Sicuani, capital of the province of Canchis, was a prosperous place at that time due to the development in the exploitation of alpaca and llama wool and its textile industrialization; During his stay there, his only daughter, photographer Julia Chambi, was born.

He established himself professionally and then decided to move to Cusco, a city where he arrived in 1920 attracted by its splendor and history. It is in this city that he carried out his most important and dazzling work until his death. It is here also where his children Angelica, Manuel and Mery are born and it is from Cusco that he achieved national and international recognition for his work.

In life and in person, he exhibited in various rooms and galleries in Lima and Arequipa, he also showed his works in La Paz, Bolivia in 1925 and in Santiago de Chile in 1936.

He was a photojournalist, for the Peruvian newspaper La Crónica and the Variedades and Mundial magazines and for La Nación de Buenos Aires from 1918 to 1930. He also published his photographic work in National Geographic in February 1938.

DECEMBER 17, 2020
Bon Voyage, THOMAS JACKSON

We are sorry that Thomas Jackson and his family are leaving the Bay Area for the East Coast. We wish them a Bon Voyage and extend an open invitation to come visit and to continue the work Thomas established here.

We cherish our Creative Community wherever they land.

Website: www.thomasjacksonphotography.com
Instagram: @thomasjackson415

DECEMBER 13, 2020
PHOTOALLIANCE YOUTUBE CHANNEL

We’re excited to announce the launch of our PhotoAlliance YouTube channel! Subscribe today and you’ll never miss out on our exciting recorded programs.
Watch our recent recorded interviews with selected artists from our 2020 Bay Area Current(ly) exhibition:

• Laura Plageman

• Rolls & Tubes Collective

• Anna Rotty

DECEMBER 9, 2020
2020 Bay Area Current(ly) EXHIBITION INTERVIEW #3

Please join us on Saturday, December 12, 2020 at 1:00 PM as Chris Johnson interviews Laura Plageman about her fascinating recent work. Ms Plageman’s work was recently selected for PhotoAlliance’s Bay Area Current(ly) exhibition.

Please register in advance for this meeting by clicking here. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Ms Plageman describes her recent work as follows:
“These images are digital collages from an in-progress series I began during quarantine. To create this work, I am using my photographs of the landscape that focus on transitions in the natural world and speak to human relationships to the land over time. From a distance our natural surroundings can appear pristine, but as we inspect more closely, we find human presence is pervasive. In this work, I embed multiple moments into a single image that is both fractured and constructed. Careful inspection reveals the mundane residue of human detritus and consumption becoming an integrated part of the environment. Here, the experience of landscape is complex and interconnected — layering and compressing time, space and place. ”

Artist Laura Plageman lives and works in Oakland, CA. She earned a BA at Wesleyan University (Middletown, CT) and an MFA from the California College of the Arts (San Francisco, CA). She is best known for her studio practice of creatively re-working her photographs of landscapes and abstractions, exploring the power and emotion of the photograph as both medium and message. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and institutions across the United States and internationally, including recent exhibitions with Lightfield Arts in NY and the Houston Center for Photography in Houston. Laura will be included in the upcoming exhibition, The Art of Trees, at the Gund Gallery of Kenyon College in Ohio in January, 2021. Images and information can be found here.

Chris Johnson is a photographic and video artist, curator and writer. Johnson studied photography with Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham and Wynn Bullock and has been the recipient of grants from the Rockefeller Foundation (w/ Hank Willis Thomas). He is a full Professor and Chair of the Photography Program at the California College of the Arts. His photographic artwork has been published and exhibited at the Smithsonian Institute, the Oakland Museum and numerous galleries and is represented in collections including the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson Arizona and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The Bay Area Current(ly) exhibit showcases recent trends in photography by San Francisco Bay area artists. View the entire exhibit here.

DECEMBER 6, 2020
2020 Bay Area Current(ly) EXHIBITION INTERVIEW #2

Please join us on Saturday, December 19, 2020 at 1:00 PM PT as Binh Danh interviews Anna Rotty about her exciting recent work. Ms. Rotty’s work was recently selected for the PhotoAlliance’s 2020 Bay Area Current(ly) exhibition.

Please register in advance for this meeting by clicking here.
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Ms Rotty describes her recent work as follows:
“As life slowed down, and I, like many others, retreated into a narrowed physical space, I’ve found opportunities to reflect in ways that were previously buried. I create alternative landscapes to enter and escape into within the familiarity of my home. Using light and reflective materials, I hope to express the drastic shift in emotions each day holds, and conjure alternative realities for the future. I respond to events happening in my broader environment, considering our human relationship with the landscape and the power and resilience of nature.”

Anna Rotty lives in Oakland, CA. She has been part of the San Francisco Artists Studios since 2017 after a month-long residency with One Plus One Plus Two Collective. Anna has recently exhibited with Incline Gallery, SF Camerawork, PhotoPlace Gallery and UMass Amherst. Projects have been featured with Six Feet Photography and Juxtapoz, and her alternative-process photography was recently recognized by the Rfotofolio Denis Roussel Award. Community and collaboration is an important part of Anna’s practice. She recently participated in a collaborative call and response project with Borderline Collective and the Museo Eduardo Carrillo and spent the last few months working for the San Francisco Department of Elections with poll workers.

Binh Danh was a juror for the PhotoAlliance 2020 Bay Area Current(ly) exhibition and he chose Rotty’s work for this interview. He earned a BFA from San José State University and an MFA from Stanford University. His awards include a Eureka Fellowship from the Fleishhacker Foundation, San Francisco, and recently, a 2019 Creative Work Fund, collaborating with the Visual and Performing Art Department at the California State University, Monterey Bay. His work has been collected by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; National Gallery of Art, Washington; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and San Jose Museum of Art, among others. He is an Assistant Professor of Art at San José State University.

The Bay Area Current(ly) exhibit showcases recent trends in photography by San Francisco Bay area artists. View the entire exhibit here.

NOVEMBER 30, 2020
2020 Bay Area Current(ly) EXHIBITION INTERVIEW #1

Ann Jastrab will be interviewing the Rolls & Tubes Collective on Sunday, December 6, 2020 at 2:00 PM live via Zoom.
This is part of the PhotoAlliance-sponsored Bay Area Current(ly) exhibit.

View the completed interview on our YouTube channel.

Rolls & Tubes Collective is comprised of four women photographers from California; Christy McDonald, Colleen Mullins, Jenny Sampson, and Nicole White. The commodification of the commonplace has become a running theme of the COVID-19 pandemic. Having made homebodies of us all, COVID-19 has created absurd rolling shortages, of flour, hair dye, and of course, toilet paper. This was the genesis of the ongoing work by the Rolls & Tubes Collective. In this work, each of the four artists has reinterpreted a known photograph in the arc of contemporary, and the history of photography, utilizing toilet paper as an element of the image.

Ann M. Jastrab is the Executive Director at the Center for Photographic Art (CPA) in Carmel, California. CPA strives to advance photography through education, exhibition and publication. These regional traditions—including mastery of craft, the concept of mentorship, and dedication to the photographic arts—evolved out of CPA's predecessor, the renowned Friends of Photography established in 1967 by iconic artists Ansel Adams, Wynn Bullock and Cole Weston. While respecting these West Coast traditions, CPA is also at the vanguard of the future of photographic imagery. Before coming onboard at CPA, Ann was the gallery manager at Scott Nichols Gallery in San Francisco where she incorporated contemporary artists with the living legends photography. Ann also worked as the gallery director at RayKo Photo Center in San Francisco for 10 years until their closure in 2017.

View the entire Bay Area Current(ly) exhibit here.

NOVEMBER 21, 2020
2020 Bay Area Current(ly) EXHIBITION

*Showing single images from selected artists. Please click on the artists name to visit the artist's website.

PhotoAlliance is proud to display this online exhibition of selected work from submissions for the 2020 Bay Area Current(ly) photographic competition. Bay Area Curent(ly) highlights trends in contemporary San Francisco Bay Area photography by recognizing a coherent body of work from each of thirty-seven area artists.

While all the work selected for the exhibition was highly significant jurors made the difficult choice to select three artists to be interviewed. Those artists are: Laura Plageman, Rolls and Tubes and Anna Rotty. Interviews will be scheduled (and live streamed) with these three entrants to discuss their work in more detail. Recording of the interviews will appear on our website in late December and early January.

List of exhibitors: Julie Alland, Bob Aufuldish, Kimberley Bermender, Lois Bielefeld, Nick Block, Barbara Boissevain, Jeffrey Braverman, Sarah Christianson, Laura DeAngelis, Kathryn Dunlevie, Andrew Faulkner, Adam Gerlach, Barbara Hazen, Mark Johann, Anton Kuehnhackl, Xiaopeng Liu, Amanda Marchand, Michelle McDonald, Mitchell Nelles, Charlotte Niel, Mark Overgaard, Sylvia Paret, Laura Plageman, Steven Raskin, Cynthia Rettig, Chris Roche, Anna Rotty, Amir Saadiq, Keman Sheng, Mika Sperling, Liz Steketee, Martin Venezky, Beth Waldman, Melanie Walker, Harry Wilson, David Wolf, and Rolls and Tubes.

Competition Jurors: Binh Danh, Ann M. Jastrab, Chris Johnson.

NOVEMBER 8, 2020
FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHER - VANESSA WOODS

Vanessa Woods holds a MFA in Film and Photography from the San Francisco Art Institute and a BA in Art History and Visual Arts from Barnard College, Columbia University. Her work has appeared in a wide range of solo and group shows and is held in the collections at The Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins, CO. She and her husband (Josh Smith) recently concluded a show with Jack Fischer Gallery in San Francisco. Woods is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including the 2017 Kala Parents Residency, Award Residency to create large scale works and an original book. She resides in Pacifica, CA with her husband and two sons.

Website: vanessawoods.com
Instragram: @vanessa_woods_studio

NOVEMBER 1, 2020
FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHER - JOSH SMITH

Born in Springfield, Missouri, Joshua Smith earned his M.F.A. in photography from the San Francisco Art Institute, and has been living and working in the Bay Area since 2004. Throughout his career he has explored various photographic projects, with his most recent being a body of work exploring the dynamics of family. Smith has exhibited widely within the Bay Area and beyond, including Stanford University, the a.Muse gallery in San Francisco, and SF Art Market. Smith is a photography instructor at Marin Academy and resides in Pacifica, CA with his wife and two sons.

OCTOBER 25, 2020
FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHER - DAVID PACE

David Pace brought us light and life through his enthusiasm for teaching, photography and social commitment. Luckily, his enthusiasm was contagious. We will continue to be enriched by his work and memory. David passed away on Wednesday, October 21, 2020.

We can continue to share his moving life’s experience at http://www.davidpacephotography.com and https://maptia.com/davidpace/stories/karaba-brick-quarry.

Pace lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he taught photography at colleges and universities for more than twenty years. From 2009 - 2013, he was the resident director of Santa Clara University's Study Abroad Program in West Africa. Pace documented daily life in the rural village of Bereba in the country of Burkina Faso, where he photographed annually from 2007 to 2016. In 2019 he published Images In Transition with collaborator Stephen Wirtz. His work has been exhibited and published internationally.

David Pace on his Burkina Faso work:
“I have been photographing in the small West African country of Burkina Faso since 2007. On my annual trips I live in the village of Bereba where I have been documenting many aspects of daily life including the weekly dance (Friday Night), the nightly commute (Sur La Route), local fashion (Market Day), traditional architecture (L'Ancien Village) and common occupations (At Work). Other projects include an exploration of brick making (Karaba Brick Quarry), artisanal gold mining (Les Sites d'Or) and the kiosks of Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso (Kiosks).”

OCTOBER 12, 2020
FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHER - KEN LIGHT

Ken Light is a photographer whose work has appeared in books, magazines, exhibitions and numerous anthologies, exhibition catalogues and a variety of media, digital and motion picture. He got his start in 1969 photographing for alternative newspapers and magazines which were widely published in posters, books and hundreds of periodicals. His book What’s Going On? 1969-1974 explores his earliest work as a young photographer documenting the social landscape of America as it roiled with upheaval.  His most recently published book Midnight La Frontera is available from TBW Books.

Light received two National Endowment for the Arts Photographers Fellowships, a N.E.A survey and publication grant, the Dorothea Lange Fellowship and a fellowship from the Erna and Victor Hasselblad Foundation as well as grants from the Soros Open Society Institute, the American Film Institute, the California Arts Commission, International Fund for Concerned Photography, the Rosenberg Foundation and the Max and the Anna Levinson Foundation as well as the Johnathan Logan Family Foundation.

He is the Reva and David Logan Professor of Photojournalism and curator of the Center for Photography at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California Berkeley, and was the 2012 Laventhol Visiting Professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He has also taught workshops at many school and photo festivals including at the ICP in New York City, The Missouri Photo Workshop, S.F. Art Institute and in the School for Photographic Studies in Prague and Baltimore. He was a founder of the Mother Jones International Fund for Documentary Photography, which awarded grants to photographers worldwide, as well a founder of Fotovision a non-profit documentary photo organization which was based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

His editorial work is represented by Contact Press Images.

website: kenlight.com
instagram: @kenlight_photo_

SEPTEMBER 13, 2020
FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHER - AMY ELKINS

Artist Statement:
Amy Elkins had plans to fly to Atlanta, GA to continue a portrait project she has been working with since 2016 in mid-March, but when all of her shoots were canceled due to the pandemic, she spontaneously turned to herself. She has produced a daily portrait since March 30th, all but one leading to mid-June when she moved, were taken inside of 340-square-foot apartment she lived in alone.  These portraits were only made possible by moving her couch every day to make room against a white wall.  As the months passed, her living situation shifted from one form of isolation to another but her process remained the same.  

She describes the process:
"I wake up, have a cup of coffee and immediately look around my apartment for things I can use for my portrait.  These have shifted as the duration of Covid blurs into an unknown stretch of time.  At first they were armor-like costumes, often made of common household items ranging from potholders, tinfoil, dish towels and toilet paper to art supplies I had on hand or acted as evidence of the consumption taking place when stuck indoors indefinitely...  Amazon packaging, takeout bags and trash left over from groceries purchased and consumed. In the beginning, I often tried to cover as much of my body and face as possible to make commentary on my fear of the virus and my efforts to guard against it.  As the months passed the portraits became less about those fears and more about confronting the anxieties, grief, complexities and fatigue of being in indefinite isolation during a global pandemic.  My working title for this ongoing series (170+ days and counting) is Anxious Pleasures. "

Biography:
Amy Elkins is a visual artist currently based in the Bay Area.  She works primarily in photography and has spent the past fifteen years researching, creating and exhibiting work that explores the multifaceted nature of masculine identity as well as the psychological and sociological impacts of incarceration.  Her approach is series-based, steeped in research and oscillates between formal, conceptual and documentary.

Elkins received her BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York City and is currently an MFA candidate in the Art Practice program at Stanford University.  She has been exhibited and published both nationally and internationally, including at The High Museum of Art in Atlanta, GA; Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna, Austria; the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, AZ; the Minneapolis Institute of Arts; North Carolina Museum of Art; among others. Her first book Black is the Day, Black is the Night won the 2017 Lucie Independent Book Award. It was shortlisted for the 2017 Mack First Book Award and the 2016 Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation Photobook Prize as well as listed as one of the Best Photobooks of 2016 by TIME, Humble Arts Foundation, Photobook Store Magazine and Photo-Eye among others.

Elkins co-founded Women in Photography (WIPNYC) with Cara Phillips in 2008.  The primarily internet-based project showcases the work of lens-based women artists outside of the traditional model of the commercial art world.  Since its inception, Women in Photography has awarded over seventeen thousand dollars in grants to artists and has collaborated with Aperture Foundation, LACMA, MoCP, Leslie Tonkonow, Lightwork, P.P.O.W Gallery, Humble Arts Foundation and many independent women curators. 

website: amyelkins.com
instagram: @thisisamyelkins
instagram: @wipnyc

AUGUST 23, 2020
FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHER - ELAINE MAYES

Elaine Mayes has been an active visual artist since 1960. A main focus and emphasis for her work has been investigations of ‘seeing’ and documentary forms in photography. This interest led to a number of projects and seeking out various close at hand situations in the world as subject material for her photographs. Elaine majored in painting and art history at Stanford University and then studied at the San Francisco Art Institute with John Collier, Jr. Paul Hassel, Minor White, Nathan Oliviera and Richard Diebenkorn.

Between 1961 and 1968 she was an independent photojournalist working in San Francisco for magazines and graphic designers. During 1967 and 1968 she was a rock and roll photographer and photographed the ‘Summer of Love’ and scene in the Haight Ashbury District of San Francisco. One of her assignments was to photograph the Monterey Pop Festival. This work was published in her book called, “It Happened In Monterey.”

Elaine taught photography for 35 years, beginning at the University of Minnesota in 1968. Then she taught at Hampshire College from 1971 to 1981, at Bard College during 1982 and 1983, and at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts from 1983 until 2001. Elaine was Chair of the Tisch Photography Department from 1997 until her retirement from teaching. Currently she is Professor Emeritus and is living in the Catskill Mountains of New York actively continuing her work.

Elaine’s photography has been exhibited extensively, with recent exhibitions connected with The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Summer of Love and The Monterey Pop Festival and include the deYoung Musuem, The California Historical Society, The SFO Museums United Airlines Terminal, The Monterey Art Museum, The Grammy Musuem, Spazio Gerra - Comune di Reggio Emilia, Italy and the Joseph Bellows Gallery in La Jolla. Elaine has received a number of awards including three grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. She also was awarded funding from The Atherton Foundation for her Hawaiian images and book production for a limited edition hand made book called, “Ki’i no Hawai’i”

AUGUST 9, 2020
FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHERS -
MIKA SPERLING AND VASUDHAA NARAYANAN

Let Me Comb Your Hair
During the COVID19 pandemic, artists Mika Sperling and Vasudhaa Narayanan engaged in a call and response exchange, between Hamburg, Germany and Bangalore, India. During this time, both experienced disruptions to their practice - Sperling had to prematurely shut down a show with a new body of work at Deichtorhallen, Hamburg; Narayanan cannot return to the United States due to closure of borders and Trump’s Travel Ban. Consequently, the quarantine forced them to look inwards with their practice - focusing on the language of care, family, intimacy, and the solitude surrounding their homes and neighborhoods. The exchange between them informs both form and content; exploring tonalities and emotions on a spectrum of images that are happenstance, and constructed. Often playing between the real and the manifested; the exchange has helped them isolate from the world yet connect with each other, by making images that feel emotionally present and tangible.

In ‘Let Me Comb Your Hair’, this joint body of work uses the photographic medium to disrupt the divisive and binary nature of collaborative work. The ego is an ever-present aspect of creation, more so in collaborative and visual work. In removing any labels associated with the images - about time, place, photographer we are left to explore only the images, and its relationship between us and the viewer. Some of the images are obviously distinguishable, while some more ambiguous. This push and pull between the presence and absence of the photographer is an exploration that we both wish to continue exploring through this work. 

Bios:
Mika Sperling is a photo-based artist currently living and working in Hamburg, Germany. Her practice is based in photography, video, writing and sound and engages ideas and concepts of family and language. Her work has been primarily biographical where she explores her own experience as one of eight children to understand the complexities of multiculturalism, identity and place. www.mikasperling.de

Vasudhaa Narayanan is a visual artist and curator living in Bangalore, India. Her work explores the complexities of identity, domesticity and gender through conceptual photographs, sculptural elements and performance. Her work is situated within the context of an Indian diaspora, confronting ideas of otherness within the patriarchal frameworks of culture; and provokes one to question their biases towards the female abject. www.vasudhaa.com

Instagram accounts:
@mikasperling, @vasudhaa

JULY 25, 2020
FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHER - AMANDA MARCHAND

Re: Touch, the Arithmetics of Distance
About five years ago, while moving studios, some experimental tests of ink on film were filed, then forgotten in the shuffle. This February 2020, I found them in a manilla envelope and, curious to see them for the first time, sent them to be scanned. By mid-March, the covid-19 pandemic was, in devastating proportions, beginning to throttle NYC, preceded by Wuhan, China, Italy, and others. I got the scans back on March 15, a day after all NYC schools were closed by Governor Cuomo, and just as alarming numbers of sick and dying began to roll in. I did not intentionally set out to make these images, so part of my fascination with this project has been with the strange alchemy of creativity itself. How something you begin five years prior, can sit patiently, like a seed, until the right moment. I am using antique-photo “re-touching” inks and analog slides. These inks are traditionally used to erase the flaws that occur in analog photography, in order to touch up and produce a perfect print. Here they are used in reverse - where the ink functions as a stain or a blotch. The process of dropping ink from a dropper onto these slides is not unlike testing for pathogens on treated medical slides. Put in place across the globe, social distancing has meant that we now cherish and ache for human touch more than ever. These images echo back, with uncanny prescience, this brave new world.

Amanda Marchand is a Canadian-born, Brooklyn-based photographer. Her work explores our mortal planet and experiments with the medium of photography. Honors include, shortlist Bartur Photo Award 2020; “3rd place series” LensCulture Art Photography Awards 2019; "Honorable Mention" FRESH 2019, Klompching Gallery; " 2nd Place, Curator’s Choice” CENTER's Choice Awards 2015, "Honorable Mention" Center Forward 2015 – CFAP; the Graduate Fellowship Award, 2001 - SFAI. Marchand has completed many residencies: the Studios at Mass MoCA, the MacDowell Colony, Headlands Center for the Arts, the Hermitage Artist Retreat, Datz Museum Residency, and Hewnoaks Artist Colony, among others. Along with having produced multiple artist books, her monograph "Nothing Will Ever be the Same Again" was published 2019 and “Night Garden” 2015, by Datz Press. Marchand's photographs have been exhibited internationally in solo and group shows and she is represented by Traywick Contemporary, CA. She is author of the book of fiction, “Without cease the earth faintly trembles,” (DC Books).
Website: https://www.amandamarchand.com/re-touch

JULY 6, 2020
FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHER - MICHAEL SANTIAGO

Michael M. Santiago (b. 1980) is a Pulitzer prize winning photojournalist. Michael received his B.F.A. at San Francisco Art Institute and a Master's of Science degree from S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. His work focuses on issues ranging from health, race and identity, family relationships, youth empowerment and more. He is the recipient of the 2015 Alexia Foundation student grant for his project "Stolen Land, Stolen Future" a body of work focusing on Black farmers of California. His project “250” a work revolving the life of a man’s struggle with obesity won the 2014 Forward Thinking Museum 1st quarter photography competition and his projects "A Promise"and "Michael the Veteran" were selected as juried winners for Morpholio Projects Future Voices. He was also invited to attend the 2015 and 2017 New York Times portfolio review and was a student at the Eddie Adams Workshop XXVIII. His portfolio received an Award of excellence at the 70th College Photographer of the Year awards and most recently received a Grand Prize award in the Documentary/Photojournalism category at PDNedu 13th Annual Student Photography Competition and a winner in the 2016 PDN Photo Annual in the student category. He was named a 2017 Carnegie-Knight News21 fellow, the News21 conducted a national multimedia investigative reporting initiative focusing on water pollution and its impact on health in the U.S. Santiago served as cinematographer and producer on News21's first documentary "Troubled Water". The film has gone on to win an Edward R. Murrow award, final in the yearly Investigative Reporters and Editors awards, earn a 2nd place title in Best of The West, was honored for a Webby, a Pro-Am Student Award at the 2018 Online Journalism Awards and a 2018 Student Production Award at the Rocky Mountain Emmy. His work has been published and featured in ProPublica, The New York Times, New York Times Lens Blog, VICE Australia, Slate, ESPN's The Undefeated, PBS Newshour, The San Francisco Chronicle, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Scientific American, The Guardian, Buzzfeed News, AARP and the Huffington Post. He has assisted for publications such as National Geographic Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine, Buzzfeed News, and Bloomberg News. Michael was also 1 of 4 contributing photographers for WNET's "Chasing the Dream: Poverty and Opportunity in America". Michael is also a member of Diversify Photo.
Website: https://www.msantiagophotos.com
Twitter/Instagram: @MSantiagophotos

JUNE 22, 2020
PASSING

Ingeborg Gerdes passed away unexpectedly in her sleep on Friday, June 19th, 2020. Ingeborg was a very dear friend and was associated with PhotoAlliance for many years, and recently, along with Elaine Mayes, presented a wonderful summary of her career. An endearing and insightful artist, she leaves us a unique legacy of work. Her spirit will be missed.

JUNE 7, 2020
FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHER - ED DREW

I spend as much time as I can in the Delta, and I have made life long friends. I’m not taking photos anymore, instead it has become a further evolution of my own being and reconciliations of being a black man in America. For a long time I hated my race, I was ashamed and scared, ashamed of what we had been reduced to and scared of the repercussions inherent in being in this country and black. The Delta is the heart of impoverished America and the truly forgotten Americans. Yet they have taught me more about pride of self, who I am and where I came from than anywhere I’ve been. My life is richer because of the Delta.

I work with the same Speed Graphic camera/lens combo I used to make my Afghanistan tintypes, only this time I use dry plates and only take 1 glass plate per trip. I keeps me coming back and thoughtful of what I am doing. The many imperfections of the images are out of my control but welcome. ruins of disarray.

JUNE 3, 2020

A message from the Executive Director of PhotoAlliance

When set upon with any great misfortune or tragedy it seems our primary response is to act. Our impetuous nature seems to drive us from one event to the next, looking for a gratifying resolution in the smoldering ruins of disarray.

The Embers of hope that rise from the ashes of chaos are short-lived.

In order to rid ourselves of the blinding scales of prejudice we must evolve consideration.

In order to dispel fear we must cultivate understanding.

If we are to continue to exist we must overcome tribalism and learn to recognize the agents of injustice and writhing demons fear.

What can we do? What can we do now? We can listen to those we do not understand. We can stand in the face of injustice and speak. We can acquire knowledge of the unknown. We can dispel ignorance with truth, the universal truth, an essential truth. We can use the gift of our own compassion as we give thoughtful consideration to the ideas and thoughts of others. Perhaps we will learn to overcome our own impulsive nature and face the unknown with a resolute dignity.

MARCH 19, 2020

Following the recommendations regarding COVID19 virus from the SF Public Health Dept and Centers for Disease Control, and in partnership with the san francisco art institute, we have canceled our remaining events scheduled for spring 2020.

Although the principle interest that draws our community together is our collective interest in photography, the health and safety of our community is paramount.

As you make decisions for yourself and your family, we encourage you to look at the comparison of four simulations (no social distancing, incomplete quarantine, moderate social distancing, and extreme social distancing) presented in the Washington Post. For a physician's perspective, we recommend this article about the actions all of us need to take right now. Another good source can be found at www.flattenthecurve.com.