Biennial Program Participants
![APW Logo Square](https://www.fotofocus.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/APW_Logo-Square-300x300.jpg)
A Picture’s Worth, Community Organization (Cincinnati, OH)
Biennial Program: Performance & Reception for More than Meets the Eye
A Picture’s Worth is a non profit organization that supports individuals and communities in sharing accurate, strengths-based narratives. In their community projects, each narrative is sparked by an individual image and audio story. Their story gathering methodology is built upon years of researching and practicing restorative media and systems change. Believing that all narratives shift based upon who is placed in the center of them, A Picture’s Worth works alongside community members to elicit narratives that center them and honor their expertise and strengths as well as their challenges. This critical work deepens the media coverage beyond just headlines and stereotypes.
Featured Project: More than Meets the Eye: An Immersive Display of Narrative Power through Photos
![Albain Headshot Square](https://www.fotofocus.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Albain_Headshot_-Square-300x300.jpg)
Mark Albain, Artist (Cincinnati, OH)
Biennial Program: Preview Tour & Opening Reception for Digressions, Humphrey Gets His Flowers, and Another First Impression
Mark Albain is an artist based in Cincinnati, OH. He describes his use of the photographic medium as a sensitive presentation that uses the language of connection and distance. Albain is founder and co-owner of Objectif Alchemy Studios, a custom framing and design studio focused on fostering collaborations. (Photo Credit: Jessica Whittington)
Featured Project: Digressions
![Almereyda Headshot Anthony Katagas Square](https://www.fotofocus.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Almereyda_Headshot_-Anthony-Katagas-Square-300x300.jpg)
Michael Almereyda, Filmmaker (New York, NY)
Biennial Program: Symposium: Southern Democratic Spotlight
Michael Almereyda’s films include Hamlet (2000), William Eggleston in the Real World (2005), Experimenter (2014), Marjorie Prime (2017), and Tesla (2020). He co-edited and contributed essays to the books William Eggleston For Now and Winogrand Color (both Twin Palms Publishers). His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Film Comment, Artforum, Aperture, and booklets for The Criterion Collection.
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Artist Run, Arts Archive and Resource (Cincinnati, OH)
Biennial Program: October 4: Bus Tours & Reception for Artist Run, October 5: Bus Tours & Reception for Artist Run, October 11: Bus Tours & Reception for Artist Run, and October 12: Bus Tours & Reception for Artist Run
Artist Run: The Continuing Legacy of Cincinnati’s Artist Run Spaces is an archive and performance project by Britni Bicknaver and Calcagno Cullen produced for the 2024 Fotofocus Biennial. artistruncincy.com
Featured Project: Artist Run: The Continuing Legacy of Cincinnati’s Artist-Run Spaces
![Banks Headshot self portrait Square](https://www.fotofocus.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Banks_Headshot_-self-portrait-Square-300x300.jpg)
Rachael Banks, Artist (Newport, KY)
Biennial Program: Artist Talk for Rachael Banks: The Trail of the Dead
Rachael Banks is an artist and educator based in Newport, KY. Banks’ research interests include folklore, ecology, and epigenetics, while her work addresses trauma and nature as central to relationships and experiences with her community. She compulsively photographs deer and black dogs.
Featured Project: Rachael Banks: The Trail of the Dead
![Berg Headshot Square](https://www.fotofocus.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Berg_Headshot_-Square-300x300.jpg)
Joshua Berg, Artist (Covington, KY)
Biennial Program: Preview Tour & Opening Reception for Digressions, Humphrey Gets His Flowers, and Another First Impression
Joshua Berg is a photographer based in Covington, KY, at the confluence of the Ohio and Licking Rivers. In a place bound by the rhythm of two rivers, Berg’s work centers on boundaries of thought and its relationship to landscape. His books, Tall as the Grass is Blue and Basin in the Shade, explore the impossibility of untethering body, place, and the endless dialogue of unraveling the actual. (Photo Credit: Kalie Krause)
Featured Project: Digressions
![Coppage Headshot Jennifer Locke Square](https://www.fotofocus.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Coppage_Headshot_-Jennifer-Locke-Square-300x300.jpg)
Michael Coppage, Artist (Cincinnati, OH)
Biennial Program: Preview Tour & Opening Reception for Digressions, Humphrey Gets His Flowers, and Another First Impression
Michael Coppage is a conceptual artist using an interdisciplinary, dialectical approach to address social issues surrounding race and language. Originally from Chicago, he has lived and worked in Cincinnati since 2007. Coppage is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including the Ohio Pretrial Justice grant, Awesome Foundation grants, ArtsWave’s Truth and Reconciliation grant, Ohio Arts Council Individual Artistic Excellence award, Artist Opportunities Grant, and The Ohio Psychiatric Physicians Foundation Enlightenment Award. He has given a TEDx Talk, titled “Everybody is Racist!….and it’s okay!” His recent project BLACK BOX, a community impact project demystifying blackness, has been exhibited regionally and internationally. Coppage has completed several public works in the United States, and has works in both public and private collections. (Photo Credit: Jennifer Locke)
Featured Project: Humphrey Gets His Flowers
![Desrosiers Headshot Jane Kratochvil Square](https://www.fotofocus.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Desrosiers_Headshot_-Jane-Kratochvil-Square-300x300.jpg)
Daisy Desrosiers, David and Francie Horvitz Family Foundation Director and Chief Curator at The Gund, Kenyon College (Mount Vernon, OH)
Biennial Program: Symposium: Ming Smith Conversation
Daisy Desrosiers is an interdisciplinary art historian and the current director and chief curator of The Gund at Kenyon College. She was previously the inaugural director of artist programs at the Lunder Institute for American Art at the Colby Museum of Art at Colby College (Maine). She was one of the co-curators of the first Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Toronto Triennale titled GTA21 in 2021. Desrosiers was also part of the 2023 Center for Curatorial Leadership cohort. Past fellowships include Nicholas Fox Weber curatorial fellow with the Glucksman Museum in Cork (Ireland) and a curatorial fellow at Brooklyn-based nonprofit, Art in General. She is a contributor to the 2024 Prospect 6 New Orleans catalog writing on artist Joan Jonas, the 2021 New Museum Triennial publication and As We Rise (Aperture, 2021). She sits on the Board of Directors at the Art Gallery of the University College Cork, (Cork, Ireland). (Photo Credit: Jane Kratochvil)
![Dooley Headshot self portrait Square](https://www.fotofocus.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Dooley_Headshot_-self-portrait-Square-300x300.jpg)
Sunny Dooley, Diné Hozhojii Teller, Creator, and Poet (Diné Nation, NM)
Biennial Program: Symposium: Chip Thomas and the Painted Desert Project Panel
Sunny Dooley is Nihókáá Diiyiin Diné/Earth Surface Divine Person residing in Ní’dishchíí’biłyildiz Dédeez’á’ Bigháá—Pinetree Glen on the High Ridge. She has been a Diné Hozhojii Hané Teller, poet, and organizer of positive possibilities for true change to root.
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Asa Featherstone IV, Curator and Artist (Cincinnati, OH)
Biennial Program: Preview Tour & Opening Reception for Digressions, Humphrey Gets His Flowers, and Another First Impression
Asa Featherstone IV is an award-winning artist whose photographs and films focus on the shared experiences that make us human. His works prioritize the beauty and nuance of daily Black life, giving voice to communities of color. In 2020, Featherstone was recognized for having one of TIME Magazine’s Top 100 portraits of the year. His photo book, Yesterday, today, and tomorrow (2022, Cincinnati Art Museum), explores the experience for emerging artists of color in the United States. Featherstone has been a visiting artist, instructor, and curator at several institutions including the RISD Museum, the Cincinnati Art Museum, Antioch College, Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, and the Art Academy of Cincinnati. Currently, he is an editor at The Photographic Journal. (Photo Credit: Andrea Sabugo)
Featured Project: Another First Impression
![Kang Headshot Square](https://www.fotofocus.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Kang_Headshot_-Square-300x300.jpg)
Sso-Rha Kang, Curator at The Carnegie (Cincinnati, OH)
Biennial Program: Symposium: Memory Fields Conversation and Curator Talk for Memory Fields
Sso-Rha Kang is the Curator at The Carnegie in Covington, KY. From 2021 to 2023, she served as the Director of Galleries and Outreach at Northern Kentucky University, where she curated exhibitions, performances, and organized events with an emphasis on cross disciplinary collaboration. Kang has taught at institutions including the University of Cincinnati, the Art Academy of Cincinnati, and Northern Kentucky University. Additionally, she has curated exhibitions for Wave Pool, Art Academy of Cincinnati: Pearlman Gallery, Third Space Gallery, and the Contemporary Arts Center. She is currently one of two Consulting Curators for the state of Ohio for the 2024 exhibition New Worlds: Women to Watch for the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. (Photo Credit: Salena McKenzie)
Featured Project: Memory Fields
![Ly Headshot self portrait Square](https://www.fotofocus.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Ly_Headshot_-self-portrait-Square-300x300.jpg)
Jesse Ly, Artist (Dayton, OH)
Biennial Program: Symposium: Memory Fields Conversation
Jesse Ly is an Asian-American photographic and image-based artist. They hold a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts with a minor in Art History and a certificate in Critical Visions from the University of Cincinnati’s college of DAAP. They currently are the Graphic Design and Photography Media Facilities Coordinator for Art & Design at the University of Dayton.
They have exhibited work both nationally across the United States and internationally. A selection of solo and two person exhibitions include: Image Interference at Basketshop Gallery, Cincinnati, OH; Support Systems at Stone House Art Gallery, Charlotte, NC; and please remember this… at The Neon Heater, Findlay, OH. Notable group exhibitions include Wild Frictions The Politics and Poetics of Interruption at The Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH; Auto//Update at The Carnegie, Covington, KY; and I Don’t Know How To Respond To That at the PhMuseum, Bologna, Italy. They are a recipient of two Culture Works Artist Opportunity Grants, an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council, a Regional Artist Renewal Grant via the National Endowment for the Arts, and was recently named a finalist for the Aperture Portfolio Prize for 2023.
Featured Project: Memory Fields
![Jones Headshot Square](https://www.fotofocus.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Jones_Headshot_-Square-300x300.jpg)
Phillip March Jones, Founder at Institute 193 in Lexington, KY and Owner of MARCH in New York, NY (New York, NY)
Biennial Program: Curator Tour of Southern Democratic
Phillip March Jones is an artist, writer, and curator based in New York City. In 2009, Jones founded Institute 193, a nonprofit contemporary art space and publisher in Lexington, Kentucky. He later served as the inaugural director of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation in Atlanta, and as director of the Galerie Christian Berst (New York/Paris) and the Andrew Edlin Gallery in New York. In 2020, Jones created MARCH, a gallery and public benefit corporation in Manhattan’s East Village that continues to operate. Jones’ writing has been published by the Jargon Society, Vanderbilt University Press, Dust-to-Digital, and Poem 88, among others. (Photo Credit: Guy Mendes)
Featured Project: Southern Democratic
James Meade, Musician (Cincinnati, OH)
Biennial Program: Performance for Southern Democratic
James Meade is a classical guitarist from Eastern Kentucky who currently resides in Cincinnati. Meade has given concerts throughout the United States, Ecuador, and Italy. Recent performance venues include: Cincinnati’s Music Hall; Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond, KY; Music For All Seasons, Scotch Plains, NJ; Universidad Espíritu Santo, Guayaquil, Ecuador; University of Pikeville, Pikeville, KY; Christ Church Cathedral, Cincinnati, OH; the Cincinnati Art Museum; and the Incontri Chitarristici di Gargnano in Italy.
![News: Brooke Minto the new director of the Columbus Museum of Art](https://www.fotofocus.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Minto_Headshot_-Square-300x300.jpg)
Brooke A. Minto, Executive Director and CEO at the Columbus Museum of Art (Columbus, OH)
Biennial Program: Members Opening Reception & Curator Talk for Ming Smith: Transcendence and August Moon
Brooke A. Minto is the Executive Director and CEO at the Columbus Museum of Art (CMA). Before joining the CMA, Minto served as the inaugural executive director of the Black Trustee Alliance for Art Museums (BTA). In 2023, Minto was recognized by the American Alliance for Museums (AAM) for her work advancing diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion (DEAI) in the museum field.
Previously, Minto served as a managing director of Advisory Board for the Arts and held senior leadership roles at Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town, the New Museum in New York, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and Pérez Art Museum Miami. She began her career in the curatorial department of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. A graduate of Dartmouth College, Minto studied art history, and earned a master’s degree in modern art and critical studies from Columbia University. Her passion for the arts extends beyond her professional endeavors; she actively contributes to the field by serving on the board of advisors for the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth and the board of directors for Print Center New York.
Featured Projects: Ming Smith: Transcendence and Ming Smith: August Moon
![Moore Headshot Wilson Reyes](https://www.fotofocus.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Moore_Headshot_-Wilson-Reyes-300x300.jpg)
Kevin Moore, FotoFocus Artistic Director and Curator (New York, NY)
Biennial Programs: Artist Tour for Chip Thomas and the Painted Desert Project, Artist Talk for Barbara Probst: Subjective Evidence, and Symposium: Chip Thomas and the Painted Desert Project Panel
Kevin Moore, Ph.D., is the Artistic Director and Curator for FotoFocus as well as Curator of the McEvoy Collection, San Francisco. His recent exhibitions and publications include Barbara Probst: Subjective Evidence (Contemporary Arts Center/Hartmann Books); Chip Thomas and the Painted Desert Project (Contemporary Arts Center); Infinite Regress: Mystical Abstraction from the Permanent Collection and Beyond (Kemper Museum); Jacques-Henri Lartigue: The Proof of Color (Atelier EXB); and Neal Slavin: When Two or More Are Gathered Together (Damiani). (Photo Credit: Wilson Reyes)
Featured Projects: Barbara Probst: Subjective Evidence and Chip Thomas and the Painted Desert Project
![Ogawa Headshot self portrait Square](https://www.fotofocus.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Ogawa_Headshot_-self-portrait-Square-300x300.jpg)
Ken Ogawa, Maker/Artist (Columbia, MO)
Biennial Program: Symposium: Chip Thomas and the Painted Desert Project Panel
Kenneth Ogawa is trained as a physician and dentist but considers himself fortunate to have had the opportunity to develop his creative talents throughout life. He has contributed to the films Korla (2015) and Mayday in The West (2008), and shown work in competition at the True/False Film Festival in Columbia, MO. He has ongoing projects with metalworking, sculpture, and electronic and acoustic sound production, recording, and manipulation. He lives and teaches in Columbia, MO.
Featured Project: Chip Thomas and the Painted Desert Project
![Price Headshot Square](https://www.fotofocus.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Price_Headshot_-Square-300x300.jpg)
Yasmina Price, Writer and Film Programmer (New York, NY)
Biennial Programs: Opening Reception & Artist Talk for Ming Smith: Wind Chime and Rotimi Fani-Kayode: Tranquility of Communion
Yasmina Price is a New York–based writer and film programmer completing a Ph.D. at Yale University. She focuses on anti-colonial cinema from the Global South and the work of visual artists across the African continent and diaspora, with a particular interest in the experimental work of women filmmakers. She has participated in public conversations and dialogues with filmmakers. Her curatorial work includes shorts programs at Anthology Film Archives, New York, NY, and Light Industry, Brooklyn, NY, as well as longer series at Brooklyn Academy of Music, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Pan African Film & Arts Festival. Recent writings have appeared in Lux Magazine, The Nation, Artforum, Film Quarterly, and Criterion.
![Probst Headshot Jonathan Lasker Square](https://www.fotofocus.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Probst_Headshot_-Jonathan-Lasker-Square-300x300.jpg)
Barbara Probst, Artist (New York, NY and Munich, Germany)
Biennial Program: Artist Talk for Barbara Probst: Subjective Evidence
Barbara Probst studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste (Munich, Germany) and Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (Düsseldorf, Germany). She has exhibited widely in Europe and the U.S., with her work included in the 2006 edition of New Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY. Solo exhibitions of her work include: Triennale Milano, Milan, Italy (2022); Kunsthalle Nürnberg, Nuremberg, Germany (2021); Le Bal, Paris, France (2019); Centre PasquArt, Biel, Switzerland (2014); Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague, Czech Republic (2014); National Museum of Photography, Copenhagen, Denmark (2013); Kunstverein Oldenburg, Oldenburg, Germany (2009)); Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison, WI (2008); and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL (2007).
Probst’s work is represented in numerous public collections, including Folkwang Museum, Essen, Germany; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, Germany; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA. Books about her work have been published by Steidl, Hatje Cantz, Harmann Books, and Editions Xavier Barral. (Photo Credit: Jonathan Lasker)
Featured Project: Barbara Probst: Subjective Evidence
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Kathy Ryan, Former Director of Photography at The New York Times Magazine (New York, NY)
Biennial Program: Symposium: backstories Keynote Lecture
The longtime director of photography at The New York Times Magazine, Kathy Ryan has been a pioneer of combining fine art photography with photojournalism. She has worked with the world’s best photographers across all genres of photography. She recently left The Times after 39 years to pursue her own artwork and other exciting projects, including curating, and currently teaches a course at Yale.
In 2011, Ryan edited The New York Times Magazine Photographs, a landmark book published by Aperture. An accompanying exhibition, curated by Ryan and Lesley Martin opened at the Rencontres d’Arles in 2012; traveled to Foam Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands; Palau Robert in Barcelona, Spain; Pontificia Universidad Católica in Santiago, Chile; and other venues in the U.S., ultimately finishing its run at the Aperture Gallery in New York City.
Office Romance, a book of Ryan’s photographs featuring her colleagues and the beauty and poetry to be found in the radiant light in The New York Times building was published by Aperture in 2014.
The Magazine’s photography and videos have been recognized with numerous awards. Ryan won a lifetime achievement award from the Griffin Museum of Photography in 2007; the Royal Photographic Society’s annual award for Outstanding Service to Photography in 2012; the Vision Award at the Center for Photography at Woodstock in 2014; and the Outstanding Contribution to Photography recognition from Creative Review in 2016. Ryan has been recognized as Photo Editor of the Year by the Lucie Awards and Visa pour l’Image. Ryan won two Emmys for videos she produced for The New York Times Magazine’s series, Great Performers. (Photo Credit: Inez and Vinoodh)
![Sealy Headshot Elina Kansikas for Index on Censorship Square](https://www.fotofocus.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Sealy_Headshot_-Elina-Kansikas-for-Index-on-Censorship-Square-300x300.jpg)
Mark Sealy, Director of Autograph (London, UK)
Biennial Program: Opening Reception & Artist Talk for Ming Smith: Wind Chime and Rotimi Fani-Kayode: Tranquility of Communion
Professor Mark Sealy is Director of Autograph, London, UK, and Professor of Photography, Rights and Representation at University of the Arts London. Author of two celebrated books published by Lawrence Wishart, Photography: Race, Rights and Representation (2022) and Decolonising the Camera: Photography in Racial Time (2019), Sealy is interested in the relationship between art, photography, social change, identity politics, race, and human rights. He has written for many of the world’s leading photographic journals, produced numerous artist publications, curated exhibitions, and commissioned photographers and filmmakers worldwide. (Photo Credit: Elina Kansikas for Index on Censorship)
Featured Project: Rotimi Fani-Kayode: Tranquility of Communion
![Senf Headshot Sean Deckert Square](https://www.fotofocus.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Senf_Headshot_-Sean-Deckert-Square-300x300.jpg)
Rebecca Senf, Chief Curator at the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ)
Biennial Program: Members Opening Reception & Curators Talk for Discovering Ansel Adams
Rebecca Senf, Ph.D., is Chief Curator at the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) at the University of Arizona, Tucson. Her B.A. in Art History is from the University of Arizona; her M.A. and Ph.D. were awarded by Boston University. In 2012, her book Reconstructing the View: The Grand Canyon Photographs of Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe was released by the University of California Press, and her book To Be Thirteen, showcasing the work of Betsy Schneider, was published in 2017 by Radius Press and Phoenix Art Museum. She has curated 50 exhibitions, including her recent Richard Avedon: Relationships, which was shown in Milan and Palermo, Italy, and Rotterdam, Netherlands. She has contributed chapters, interviews, and essays to over a dozen publications. Senf is an Ansel Adams scholar, and in 2020 released a book on Adams’ early years called Making a Photographer, co-published by the CCP and Yale University Press, now in a second printing. (Photo Credit: Sean Deckert)
Featured Project: Discovering Ansel Adams
![Smith Headshot Nicolas Kantor Square](https://www.fotofocus.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Smith_Headshot_-Nicolas-Kantor-Square-1-300x300.jpg)
Ming Smith, Artist (New York, NY)
Biennial Programs: Symposium: Ming Smith Conversation and Opening Reception & Artist Talk for Ming Smith: Wind Chime and Rotimi Fani-Kayode: Tranquility of Communion
Ming Smith has been photographing since early childhood. Embracing photography as a spiritual practice, the Harlem-based, Detroit-born artist’s photographs reflect a lifelong exploration of movement, light, rhythm, and shadow. Moving to Harlem after graduating from Howard University in the early 1970s, Smith found the neighborhood to be home to a community of Black artists, musicians, and performers, including herself. She was the first woman to join the Kamoinge Workshop, a Harlem-based collective of Black photographers documenting Black life, and, in 1979, became the first Black woman photographer acquired by The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City.
Smith was included in MoMA’s 2010 seminal exhibition, Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography. Additional major group exhibitions include: We Wanted A Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-85 at Brooklyn Museum in New York (2017); Soul of a Nation at Tate Modern in London, England (2017), which traveled to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, AR (2018), The Broad in Los Angeles, CA (2019), Brooklyn Museum in New York (2019), deYoung Museum in San Francisco, CA (2019), and The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, TX (2020); and Working Together: The Photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop, organized by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA and presented by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York (2020). In 2023, MoMA presented Projects: Ming Smith, a survey of the artist’s photography from the 1970s through her most recent work.
Smith’s work is included in the collections of MoMA, New York, NY; the Whitney Museum of Art, New York, NY; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond, VA; the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, NY; and the National Museum of African-American History and Culture, Washington, DC. In 2023, Smith received the Lifetime Achievement award from the International Center of Photography in New York and the Lucie Award for Achievement in Portraiture.
Featured Projects: Ming Smith: Transcendence, Ming Smith: August Moon, and Ming Smith: Wind Chime
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Nathaniel M. Stein, Curator of Photography at the Cincinnati Art Museum (Cincinnati, OH)
Biennial Program: Members Opening Reception & Curators Talk for Discovering Ansel Adams
Nathaniel M. Stein, Ph.D., is Curator of Photography at the Cincinnati Art Museum. Stein earned degrees in art history from Wesleyan University and Brown University, where his doctoral research focused on the history of photography in India. He has organized exhibitions on historical and contemporary photography—including presentations in Cincinnati of the works of David Hartt and John Edmonds, Sohrab Hura, Gillian Wearing, the Kamoinge Workshop, and Hank Willis Thomas—and led the formation of the museum’s Nancy Rexroth Collection. Recent publications include The Natural World (2022, Cincinnati Art Museum), The Levee: A Photographer in the American South (Cincinnati Art Museum, 2020), and Interference: Andre Bradley and Paul Anthony Smith (Cincinnati Art Museum, 2017), as well as contributions to Beyond Bollywood: 2000 Years of Dance in the Arts of South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Himalayan Region (Asian Art Museum, 2022). Prior to arriving in Cincinnati, Stein held curatorial positions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the RISD Museum. Locally, he serves on the ArtsWave Pride Steering Committee. (Photo Credit: Tim Tiebout)
Featured Project: Discovering Ansel Adams
![50th Logo Refresh SM EP](https://www.fotofocus.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Summermusik_Logo-Square-300x300.jpg)
Summermusik, Performing Arts Organization (Cincinnati, OH)
Biennial Program: Performance & Reception for More than Meets the Eye
Summermusik creates intimate, transformative experiences that connect the musically curious. Founded in 1974, the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra (CCO) remains the resident ensemble of Summermusik, comprised of 32 professional musicians. Summermusik is widely recognized as one of the leading performing arts organizations in the Greater Cincinnati region.
The organization’s multi-disciplinary performances range from operatic and choral productions to collaborations with arts organizations in dance, musical theater, puppetry, literature, and visual art. Collaborators have included Walk with Amal, VAE: Cincinnati’s Vocal Arts Ensemble, Cincinnati Ballet, Madcap Puppets, School for Creative & Performing Arts, Cincinnati Art Museum, Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati Contemporary Jazz Orchestra, Revolution Dance Theatre, and Elementz, among many others.
In August 2015, the critically acclaimed summer music festival Summermusik was launched. The festival hosts three distinct series—Mainstage, A Little Afternoon Musik, and Chamber Crawls—each one a layer in the unique voice of Summermusik, performing music from Bach to rock.
Featured Project: More than Meets the Eye: An Immersive Display of Narrative Power through Photos
![Thomas Headshot Scott Sady Square](https://www.fotofocus.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Thomas_Headshot_-Scott-Sady-Square-300x300.jpg)
Chip Thomas, Photographer and Public Artist (Flagstaff, AZ)
Biennial Program: Artist Tour of Chip Thomas and the Painted Desert Project and Symposium: Chip Thomas and the Painted Desert Project Panel
Chip Thomas, a.k.a. jetsonorama, is a photographer, public artist, and physician who has been working in a small clinic on the Navajo Nation since 1987. There he coordinates the Painted Desert Project, a community-building dialogue which manifests as a constellation of murals painted by artists from the Navajo Nation and around the world.
Thomas’ public artwork consists of enlarged black and white photographs pasted onto structures along roadsides across the country, but primarily on the Navajo Nation. Thomas was a 2018 Kindle Project gift recipient and, in 2020, was one of a handful of artists chosen by the United Nations (UN) to recognize the 75th anniversary of the UN’s founding. With no formal artistic training, he identifies strongly with the DIY energy of punk and hip-hop. (Photo Credit: Scott Sady)
Featured Project: Chip Thomas and the Painted Desert Project
![Wheeler Headshot Square](https://www.fotofocus.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Wheeler_Headshot_-Square-300x300.jpg)
Harris Wheeler, Poet (Lexington, KY)
Biennial Program: Performance for Southern Democratic
Harris Wheeler is a poet from Lexington, KY. They host the Domestic Water Reading Series, which takes place monthly at Conveyor Belt Books in Covington, KY. Their work has been published in Wonder, Dirt Child, Hobart, and elsewhere.