Each year, Photolucida invites wonderful new jurors to Critical Mass. Our goal is to provide wide exposure for participating photographers. To do this, we keep a careful eye on the industry and invite jurors who are poised to provide valuable opportunities to artists. We thought we'd take a moment to introduce a few of the new faces:
Curator & Co-Founder, Reminders Photography Stronghold
Yumi Goto is an art and documentary photography curator, editor, researcher and consultant who focuses on the development of cultural exchanges that transcend borders. She collaborates with Japan-based and international artists who live and work in areas affected by conflict, natural disasters, current social problems, human rights abuses and women’s issues. She often works with human rights advocates, international and local NGOs, humanitarian organizations, as well as international photo festivals and events throughout Asia. She is a founder of the Reminders Project and Tokyo Documentary Photography Workshop, and has launched the Reminders Photo Project Grant for Asian Photographers, “Visual Story Telling,” with the Angkor Photo Festival. Goto is a board reviewer of Emphas.is, a Prix Pictet Photography Prize nominator, a 2012 MAGNUM Emergency Fund nominator, Photo City Sagamihara Asia Prize nominator, a jury member of the Asian Women Photographers Showcase for the Angkor Photo Festival. She is a curator for the Photo Forum Beirut and a photo editor of the 100th memorial photographic book project, THIS DAY OF CHANGE. She is a recipient of the Women’s Human Rights Activities Award, Yayori Journalist Award. Reminders Photography Stronghold shows images taken by photojournalists who understand their subjects deeply and continue to cover issues through their own viewpoints. In addition to covering these stories, The Reminders Project creates slide shows, workshops, and national and international photo exhibitions. The Reminders Project has two fundamental ideas: to introduce stories widely and to seek various viewpoints.
Curator, Shutterstock
Founder, Finch & Ada
Liz Lapp is the curator for Shutterstock and the founder of Finch & Ada, a contemporary fine arts collaborative, working with international artists and companies including, Dolly Faibyshev, Robert Otto Epstein, Ruben Natal-San Miguel, Uprise Art, and ArtStar. Mrs. Lapp is an 11-year veteran in visual arts and marketing, with a degree from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. She served as the gallery curator at Farmani Gallery, and assisted in event planning and operations management in New York for The Lucie Awards, PX-3: Prix De La Photographie Paris, and The IPA (International Photography Awards). She has also contributed as a writer to PDN, PDNedu, and The ASMP National Bulletin, and served as a fine art photography portfolio reviewer for the 9th Annual powerHouse portfolio reviews, the annual ASMP NY fine art photography portfolio review and the 2010 New York Photo Festival.
Creative Director, United Photo Industries
Co-Founder, Photoville
Serving as United Photo Industries’ Creative Director, Sam Barzilay is also the Co-Founder of Photoville, a new pop-up photo destination that made its debut on the Brooklyn waterfront in the summer of 2012. Prior to founding United Photo Industries and launching the United Photo Industries Gallery, he was the Director of the New York Photo Festival. In his dual capacity as curator and festival organizer, he has had the pleasure and privilege of curating photo exhibitions and lecturing on current trends in contemporary photography as far afield as China, Greece, USA, and Japan.
Program Director, Project Basho & ONWARD
Tsuyoshi Ito was raised in Tokyo and moved to Philadelphia in his early 20s to attend Temple University. Noticing a void in Philadelphia’s photographic community, Ito founded Project Basho in 2002 to provide photography classes, a gallery, and a darkroom space for working artists. He continues to develop this program which now includes an international competition and photography conference that goes by the name ONWARD. For his personal work, Ito is particularly interested in historical processes as well as techniques that bridge the old and the new.
Founder & Director, Documentary Arts Asia
Documentary Arts Asia exists to support the production and dissemination of documentary photography and film in Asia. The Documentary Arts Centers in Chiang Mai, Thailand & Kachin State Burma support documentary artists through a variety of training, library resources, grants, mentoring and exposition / promotion of their work. The organization also strives to gain recognition for the importance of high-quality, independent documentary practice through its own Artist in Residence program, theater, gallery, agency, magazine and documentary arts festival. The Documentary Arts Asia Centers host a broad program of trainings, speakers and events, as well as the promotion and dissemination of independent documentary work by those working with still and moving images across Asia. It is DAA’s hope that through these programs it will be able to influence the rapidly spreading interest in general photography in Asia to help it reach its immense potential for high quality, independent documentary practice. DAA especially aims to assist with the production and promotion of documentary projects which exist outside the mainstream media, particularly those which show the world through the eyes of marginalized communities and expose under-reported issues. Ryan Libre is a 2010 Nikon Inspiration Award Winner, a 2011 Chapnick grantee from the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund, a grantee of the Pulitzer Center, a two-time TEDx speaker, and lecturer at Chiang Mai University's Photo department.
