Juror Highlights
The Critical Mass jury is an impressive bunch. These are people who love photography – people who have dedicated their careers to producing fantastic exhibitions, publishing erudite monographs and editorial pieces, championing artists, and strengthening the photographic community with their considerable talents.
Each year, there are many new faces on the Critical Mass jury. These folks are bright lights in the photo world: publishers, photo editors, museum curators, gallerists, festival directors, new media producers, and collectors with a keen interest in contemporary photography. We also invite a number of fantastic jurors who have participated in previous years. We ask these dedicated people back because they are consistently part of the national/international conversation in the photo world. Getting your work in front of any of these people (or better yet, all of them) is a way to be a part of that conversation.
We thought it would be fun to introduce a few of the new faces on the Critical Mass jury, here on our blog. Quick reminder – registration is open now. Don’t miss it!
Without further ado – these are some of the good people of Critical Mass 2015:
Sarah Hadley
Founder & Executive Director, Filter Photo
Sarah Hadley grew up in the Gardner Museum in Boston and went on to study art history at Georgetown and photography at the Corcoran College of Art. She worked at the Venice Biennale, the Library of Congress, and the National Gallery of Art before moving to Chicago and spending 12 happy years there. In Chicago, she worked in museums and as a photographer and in 2009, she founded the Filter Photo Festival. She has curated many exhibitions and written book reviews for Publishers Weekly and F-Stop Magazine. Hadley’s own photography has been widely published and exhibited internationally at the Lishui Photo Festival in China, the Worldwide Photography Biennial Exhibition in Buenos Aires, Fotofever in Paris, as well as in many galleries and museums throughout the US.
Siobhán Bohnacker
Senior Photo Editor, The New Yorker
Siobhán Bohnacker is a Senior Photo Editor at The New Yorker where she commissions photography for the magazine, concepts and art directs visuals for the Fiction section, and regularly contributes to newyorker.com. Previously she worked as a freelance photo editor at The New York Times Magazine and as in-house producer for portrait photographer, Platon. At Platon’s, Siobhán worked with Chronicle Books and Apple on the publication of Platon’s volume Power and the accompanying app, and she collaborated with The New Yorker and Human Rights Watch on award-winning portfolios. She consulted the International Center of Photography on independent artists books for their 2013 Triennial, “A Different Kind of Order” and has organized exhibitions at Matthew Marks Gallery (New York), Colette (Paris), The New York Historical Society, and Lincoln Center.
Janice Driesbach
Chief Curator, Akron Art Museum
Janice Driesbach has served as chief curator at the Akron Art Museum since 2012. Photography is among the collection strengths at the museum, where the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation established an award for the purchase of work in photography-based media by living artists. She is working on an exhibition for this year’s recipient, Andrea Modica, in fall 2015 and recently organized the exhibition Christopher Pekoc: Hand Made featuring evocative assemblages incorporating photographic elements by an exceptional Cleveland artist. Driesbach has also overseen modern and contemporary art acquisitions, exhibitions and installations as Director at the Dayton Art Institute and the Sheldon Museum of Art at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Chief Curator at the Crocker Art Museum.
Takeki Sugiyama
Director, Gallery Tanto Tempo (Kobe, Japan)
Chairman, Mt. Rokko International Photo Festival
A photography collector since 2006, Takeki Sugiyama is dedicated to creating a photographic community with a strong emphasis on education and industry that can contribute to and strengthen Japanese art and culture. He opened Gallery Tanto Tempo in 2008 in Kobe with a strong vision of fostering photography community. He attends many photography festivals around the world and has produced the Mt. Rokko International Photo Festival since 2013. He is always looking for strong photo stories and is actively offering opportunities for photographers to take part in group and solo shows in Kobe.
