Goodbye 2015: A Year in Review

 I wanted to take a pause this New Year to think about 2015. It’s easy to let a year go by and not want to reflect on the goings on of that year—immediately putting resolutions on the wall and wishing for the next year to constantly be better that the previous. 

Aline Smithson made a post on Lenscratch of her and her team’s Favorite Things of 2015. So, I wanted to make a contribution to this by making my own list! See blow.

Favorite Light Leaked Post of 2015

Tall Tales: aninvestigative look into the surreal

Tall Tales was an online and physical exhibition on Light Leaked and at Canopy Collective in Cleveland, OH. It was an amazing experience to put together with Caitie Moore and Erika Dee. All the work! All the conversations over Skype! I loved that it involved creating a selection of images from the photography community and that it provided an opportunity to curate a focused selection of a lot of photographers at once. I was really proud of how the exhibition that came together.


Honorable Mention:

How to: Make a UV Exposure Unit for Alternative Process

This year Light Leaked started creating tutorial posts for processes that I felt this community would find valuable. For this post, the power couple, Ashley Whitt and Ross Faircloth, shared the process of how they created an inexpensive (and huge!) UV exposure unit for alternative processes in their at-home studio. And it was glorious.

Favorite Featured Light Leaked Artist of 2015

Abbey Hepner

I met Abbey earlier this year and I immediately connected with her and her work on nuclear energy. Rooted in science, research, and inquiry, Abbey’s work brings the viewer into a world in which we assume a lot, but actually know very little. And we’re all better for it. In November the curator and independent writer, Laura Addison, conducted an insightful interview with Abbey about her work. If you missed it, make sure to check it out!

Favorite Photography Book of 2015

Many amazing photography books were published this year. Here’s a few I LOVED:

Aline Smithson, Self & Others, Magenta Foundation

You guys. This book. What words can I even use to describe the genius of Aline and the Magenta Foundation? First, let’s talk design. I got the special edition of this book and I think it is the way to go if you haven’t bought your copy yet. The print and color choices are so, Aline: off-beat, seductive, smart, fun. Something about it feels like an f-you to the simple traditional style of monographs, and I love it. The layout of the images and pages are playful and experimental—very in line with Aline’s work. This also creates a rhythmic flow through the pages, and before you know it, you’re at the end and need to start again. It also really tells the story of Aline’s growth as an artist over the years: her movement from one idea to the next and really, the playful nature that entails. It’s the journey of a powerful and intimate artist telling stories, and we are all lucky enough to have a front row seat.

Honorable Mention:

Maude Schuyler Clay, Mississippi History, Steidl

Oh my goodness, Maude Schuyler Clay is a Southern goddess. Mississippi History is absolutely one of the most beautiful photography books I have seen in person. The printing is divine, the design, scale and sequencing is heaven. Every detail is so considered that it makes this lifetime of work sing out from the page, begging re-viewing. The content is expansive, spanning thirty years of color work that comes together to describe a personal, photographic, Mississippi history.

I can foresee Mississippi History being talked about with the likes of Stephen Shore and Robert Frank in the future. I am not even worrying about overselling it, because this is the truth.

Honorable Mention 2:

Lori Vrba, The Moth Wing Diaries, Daylight Books

To start, the cover is a smooth, velvety white hardcover with a tipped in photograph and letter pressed text. The images are expertly printed on thick weight paper and are amazing replications of the hand-toned photographs I’ve seen in person. Overall, the book is simple yet elegant. The work causes the viewer to reflect on family, love, relationships, memory, life… It’s a stunning visual poem.

Daylight published some beautiful books this year, and I am really looking forward to their future as a publishing house.

Favorite Non-Photographic Book of 2015

Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

"You do not need anybody’s permission to live a creative life."

I know some people may be skeptical of a book written by Elizabeth Gilbert--if Eat, Pray, Love wasn't your thing. But any fan of Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland will love this book. It's a deep investigation into the mysteries of the creative process and living a creative life.

This book was like getting advice from a trusted friend, and caused me to reflect on my artist practice, expectations of myself, and how to manifest ideas into art. In short, it was the most inspirational book I read this year.

Honorable Mention:

Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town by: Jon Krakauer

Note: there are graphic descriptions of rape in this book

Missoula chronicles the rape allegations from several college-aged women at the University of Missoula from 2008-2012, as well as the overall state of sexual assault in America. First, Krakauer is a nuanced nonfiction writer and investigative journalist. Second, this book raises powerful and essential questions surrounding how our society handles rape cases. I would describe this as the most insightful and heart-wrenching book I read this year.

Honorable Mention 2:

The Night Circus by: Erin Morgenstern

Okay. So this book came out in 2011. But I read it for the first time (and the 2nd time and the 3rd time) this year. The Night Circus is a finely drawn dark narrative that intertwines the lives of 3 protagonists as they navigate the creation and possible destruction of a traveling circus, Le Cirque des Rêves, that only opens at night. This was simply the most fun read/listen* of the year for me.


*A quick shout out to Audible (not sponsored), which I got this year, and was definitely the BEST money I spent. I work a lot, and used to only read books before I went to bed. Now, I can listen to amazing productions of books on my phone when I'm working, driving, cleaning, and yes, about to go to bed. Because of this, I have read (listened?) to more books this year than the last several years combined. Check it out, especially if you are an auditory learner, like me.

Inspirational Photographer of 2015

Micah Cash

A source of inspiration for me this year came from the magic that is Micah Cash. He is an articulate, smart, well-rounded artist that works in photography and painting. Not to mention a caring and inspiring friend. His work, Dangerous Waters, takes any viewers understanding of the TVA to new levels.

Here’s a couple things Mr. Cash taught me this year:

1. The power of the conceptual landscape 
2. The power of intricately researched work 
3. The power of confidence 
4. The power of public speaking 

Favorite Photography Event of 2015

Light Leaked Meet-up at SPE

This was definitely one of the most fun events of the year, for me. It was so great to see a lot of Light Leaked artists and readers come together in one place, interchange ideas, and meet one another. I wish we could have events like this more often because this was seriously inspiring. Look out for an invite to the next meet-up at SPE in Las Vegas!

Favorite Album of 2015

Blue Neighborhood by Troye Sivan

Blue Neighborhood is a pop/synth affair that is the first studio album by this Australian singer/songwriter. I describe him as a male Lorde to anyone who asks. Although this album is not perfect, it is beautifully emotional. It’s sexy! It’s fun! It’s been on repeat.

Note: amazing noodle dancing in above video

First listen to: Youth

Honorable Mention:

Cicada Rhythm by Cicada Rhythm 

Cicada Rhythm is an Athens, GA based folk duo that are as haunting as they are beautiful. The album is very Townes van Zandt meets Regina Spektor. Drive with the windows down to “Dirty Hound.”

First listen to: Do Not Destroy

Favorite Professional Moment of 2015

Photo by: Tamara Reynolds 

Questions of Origin Solo Exhibition and Panel at Slow Exposures

Slow Exposures is a rising star in the world of photography festivals. Based in rural Georgia, and organized by Chris Curry. These “Four Slow Days” are full of photography exhibitions, pop up shows, artist/juror talks, and drinking wine on porches. Last year also marked the beginning of an artist in residency program, which is currently open for submissions.


Questions of Origin was selected by Aline Smithson and Alexa Dilworth as the solo show award winning at the juried exhibition the previous year. It was a great solo exhibition and panel discussion with Karen Lacey and Celeste Headlee that was broadcast on GPB Radio at Slow Exposures.

Seeing the work together and talking about it detail with a panel and an audience, brought a sense of perspective and resolution to that work that I didn’t have before.

Favorite Personal Moment of 2015

This year I got engaged! My now fiancé, Ethan Fogus, brought me on a kayaking trip in the Tennessee mountains and proposed with his grandmother’s ring from the 1920s. It was beautiful, sweet, and fun. For those who don’t know Ethan, he is a Bruce-Springsteen-loving-hilarious-songwriter-musician-poet-educator-allaroundgreatperson. I’m really looking forward to our life together!

All that being said, here’s some resolutions I have for 2016:

1. Create more artist run contributions (articles, tutorials, exhibitions, interviews) on Light Leaked. Have one in mind? Email to: lightleaked@gmail.com
2. Have more conversations in person (I will accept Skype in this resolution) 
3. Take time to sit quietly 
4. Spend more time outside, away from my computer 
5. Don’t check my email first thing in the morning 
6. Always have a running 6 month plan
7. Make more work
8. Share my work with others 
9. Practice generosity, kindness, and empowerment with everyone 
10. Practice confidence and empowerment with myself 

Thank you to the community of Light Leaked and the photo community at large for making this a great 2015! Your passion, inspiration and encouragement are everything.

Highlights from: Slow Exposures

Install Image by Ann George

Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending the photography event Slow Exposures in Pike County, Georgia. It was a weekend packed with nontraditional photography events, like pop-up exhibitions, soirees with three legged dogs, and late night cabin critiques. After an exciting (and tiring!) weekend, I highly suggest heading to this event next year, and entering the annual juried exhibition.

Here are a few highlights:

Install Image by Ann George

"The Posse" Pop-up Exhibition 

Time, Place, and Eternity: Flannery O’Connor and the Craft of Photography

Anne Berry, Ann George, Bryce Lankard, S. Gayle Stevens, and Lori Vrba

Exhibition Statement from the artists:

The writer [photographer] operates at a particular crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location” (59):  A photographer need only substitute nouns: photographer for writer and photograph for story, to understand how Flannery O’Connor’s thoughts on the craft of writing apply to the art of photography. This year, which marks the fifty-year anniversary of her death, five southern photographers pay tribute to Flannery O’Connor by creating a pop-up exhibit in the barn at Split Oak Farm in Zebulon, GA as part of Slow Exposures, A Juried Exhibition Celebrating Photography of the Rural South. This exhibit follows the Posse’s 2013 pop up, Hay Now, which New York curator John Bennette called “the most brilliant installation ever to come down 109:” In his words, “My breath was swept away. I said, ‘hallelujah, something wonderful has come to this town.” Time, Place, and Eternity explores five aspects in Flannery O’Connor’s writings that relate to the craft of photography: Grace, Mystery, Manners, Gesture, and Habit. We are opening the exhibit at SlowExposures, and our goal is for it to travel to other venues throughout the coming year.

Eliot Dudik 
On This Land I See Heroes and Saints
Curated by John A. Bennette

Exhibition Statement from Slow Exposures: 

"This unique exhibition combines related bodies of work by Elliot Dudik: Broken Land and Still Lives. Mr. Bennette was inspired by Mr.Dudik’s images and ideas as well as The Good Lord Bird: A Novel by James McBride, winner of the 2013 National Book Award. It is an inspired and imaginative retelling of the events around abolitionist John Brown’s cause from the perspective of 12 year-old Henry Shackleford, a Kansas slave Brown mistakes for a girl. Henry, living in disguise joins the band of abolitionists and bears witness to meetings with Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, as well as the raid on Harpers Ferry.

Mr. Dudik’s work is timely, or maybe timeless, as it deals with a subject that has plagued man for generations: War. At the time of the Civil War, photography was coming into its own. The elements of War: battles, casualties, the land and the pre-battle keepsakes became one of the first subjects of importance recorded with this new technology.As a direct result of the Civil War, America was reborn at the beginning of the 20th century—it was to be The American Century when the nation rose from the ashes of war.

Broken Land is a meditation on key battle sites that will evoke conversations. Dudik’s thought processes are revealed through his artist statement, “These photographs are an attempt to preserve American History, not relish it, but to recognize its cyclical nature and derail that seemingly inevitable tendency for repetition.”

Still Lives is a photo essay of Civil War re-enactors, people from all walks of life coming together, for many reasons, to preserve history to the best of their abilities. This photo essay is an ongoing series of portraits, which have stories to tell and memories to give, that places the viewer at the critical moment on the battlefields."

McNair Evans
Confessions for a Son
Winner of the Conlan Prize for First Place in Slow Exposures 2013

Project Statement from the artist: 

There was no man that my father admired more than his father, and no one his father admired more than the man who raised him. With tenderness of heart and warm humor my father met everyone as his equal.

Upon his death in November 2000, I was exposed to our family business’s insolvency. Dad faced a series of devastating fires, bad crops, perpetual over- extension and high-interest loans. Five generations of familial and financial stability fractured. While the economic effects were immediately obvious, the emotional implications lingered beneath the surface for nine years.

In 2010 I returned home to photograph the lasting psychological landscape of Dad’s legacy. Retracing my father’s life, I used photography to comprehend its events. Visiting the farms where we hunted, his college dorm rooms, and his oldest friends, I photographed his family members and businesses while researching his character and actions. I could not equate these.

Initially confused and angry, I grew to know him as a teenager, college student, co-worker, life-long friend, and father who lovingly withheld business realities. I witnessed shortcomings and successes and found empathy with a man who faced so much in his life. His sacrifices cost the ultimate price, and accepting that some questions may never be answered, I grew to love him again.

Confessions for a Son juxtaposes these photographs with those taken by my father roughly 40 years ago. Photographs from family archives and experimental practices join to explore this complex relationship between father and son. These works share my emotions after his death, my search to learn more abut him in recent years, and the journey of acceptance and forgiveness.

These pictures are my way of saying its OK. Everything that happened is done and it’s OK. They are my way of taking ownership of everything that I felt, and all the anger and all the shame, and saying, “Yes, I felt that, and it’s OK to feel that, and I still love you.”

Aline Smithson and Alex Dilworth discussing second place winner, Aaron Blum at the juror talk

Photography of the Rural South

Juried by Aline Smithson and Alexa Dilworth

Exhibition Statement from Slow Exposures:

"Every photographer has had the experience of seeing an image and passing it by. We did not stop the car, turn around, go back….interrupt that conversation… take the photograph that was there right in front of our eyes. Many such “I wish I had taken the time” moments dot our shared lives as photographers. And whether we live in the rural south, or visit and pass thru the southern countryside, we all see the evidence of a disappearing rural lifestyle, architecture and way of life that has historically existed in small southern towns, homes and lives for decades.

Slow Exposures began and continues to be a unifying platform to challenge photographers to not only stop, turn the car around and take photographs of this south that is fading away – sometimes gently, sometimes harshly – but to also actively seek out and preserve thru photography, the South today.

Photographs tell stories. Photographs document a window into our present – which becomes the future generations past – and as time capsules, are priceless gifts to ourselves.

SlowExposures honors this mission and I am proud to continue to support this photographic tradition." --Gary Gruby

Aline Smithson's Five Favorite: Photographers to Watch

Over the last few months, I have been exposed to terrific work and wonderful portfolios through juroring exhibitions and attending portfolio events. Narrowing my discoveries down to 5 photographers was almost impossible, so my selections truly reflect the tip of the iceberg of quality work in the current photo zeitgeist.

While jurying the Griffin Museum Annual Juried Exhibition, I discovered the work of Greg Sand and Molly Lamb—and then had the opportunity to see Molly’s work in person at Review Santa Fe. Both submitted several significant images to the Griffin Exhibition and it was tough to select just one.

Greg Sand

Greg Sands’ work is based on memory and loss, drawing us in by what is not in the photograph. Leaving only a trace of the original photograph, the viewer is left to imagine what might have been and makes us consider the truth of the photographic image. I appreciate that the altered images contain whimsy, but more purposefully examine the issues of existence, time and death.

Molly Lamb

Molly Lamb’s photographs from her series, Ghost Stepping, are powerful as individual images and even stronger when combined into a series. Her photographs are visually layered and speak to the transience of objects after the passing of a loved one. She has given those objects energy and life through light and perspective, creating personal still lifes that allow us to see anew.

Frances Denny 

Frances Denny won the Lenscratch Student Award and I was happy to see the work in person at Review Santa Fe. Having recently graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design, her work is already being well celebrated and exhibited. She uses color, light, pattern, and graphic elements to explore female family members in her project, Let Virtue Be Your Guide. I am drawn to this work for is well seen and beautifully articulated tableaus that consider “legacy and embodiment”.

Stephen Milner 

Stephen Milner submitted his project, The Ogeechee River, to Lenscratch. Through our correspondence, I came to appreciate Stephen’s dedication to his craft and his examinations of our world. Stephens’ photographs reflect his ability to capture place and put into context the fragility of not only the natural world, but the communities coexist along side it.

Thank you Aline Smithson! 

After a career as a New York Fashion Editor and working along side the greats of fashion photography, Aline Smithson discovered the family Rolleiflex and never looked back. Now represented by galleries in the U.S. and Europe and published throughout the world, Aline continues to create her award-winning photography with humor, film, and a 50-year-old 2.8F Twin Lens Rolleiflex.

In 2012, Aline received the Rising Star Award through the Griffin Museum of Photography for her contributions to the photographic community. Aline founded LENSCRATCH; she has been the Gallery Editor for Light Leaks Magazine, and a contributing writer for Diffusion, Don’t Take Pictures, Lucida, and F Stop Magazine. Aline juries competitions and curates exhibitions for numerous galleries, organizations, and magazines, including CENTER, Critical Mass, The Center of Fine Art Photography and The Magenta Foundation. She has been a reviewer and workshop instructor at photo festivals across the United States, was nominated for The Excellence in Photographic Teaching Award in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and received Honorable Mention in 2012 and was nominated for The Santa Fe Prize in Photography in 2009. Aline has been teaching at the Los Angeles Center of Photography in Los Angeles since 2001, and at the Santa Fe Photo Workshops since 2012. She is a founding member of the Six Shooters Collective. Aline lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Harry, and considers her children her greatest achievement. She is not yet ready to get another dog but actively borrows from friends.