ROAMING REVIEWS

Roaming Reviewers are available for casual, informal conversations about your work. Show them what you’re working on, prep for portfolio reviews, or just join the conversation about photography.

 

This free Festival event is available Thursday – Saturday from 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM CT in the Festival Lounge on the fifth floor of the Columbia College Student Center.

Thursday, September 24th 

Barbara Ciurej, Artist 

Barbara Ciurej is a Chicago-based photographer and graphic designer. She has a BS in Visual Communications from the Institute of Design+Illinois Institute of Technology. Ever looking to the art historical past to invoke order and harmony, her search for narratives to explain how we got here has fueled 40+ years of making pictures.

Lali Khalid, Artist and Educator 

Lali Khalid’s work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions internationally. She was recently recognized as a Distinguished Fellow for the Penland School of Craft’s 2026 Winter Residency, and Khalid received the 2025–2026 Diane Dammeyer Fellowship in Photographic Arts and Social Issues from the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. Her first monograph, Home. In my heart, beating far away, was published in 2021 by Artvoices Books, and Khalid’s latest book, Letters to Azan, is scheduled to be released in June 2026 by Workshop Arts.

Born in Lahore, Pakistan, Khalid was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 2007 and she obtained her MFA in Photography from Pratt Institute. Khalid holds a BFA in Printmaking from the National College of Arts in Lahore. She is currently serving as a Visiting Artist in Photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and resides and works in Chicago, Illinois.

Friday, September 25th 

Ariel Pate, Chief Curator at the Haggerty Museum of Art

Ariel Pate is chief curator at the Haggerty Museum of Art at Marquette University, where she focuses on presenting thoughtful, community-informed exhibitions for on- and off-campus audiences. Previously, she was assistant curator of photography at the Milwaukee Art Museum. There, she curated permanent collection-based exhibitions, includingTrue Story: Photography, Journalism, and Media (2024) and Photographing Nature’s Cathedrals: Carleton E. Watkins, Eadweard Muybridge, and H. H. Bennett (2018). She was a founding member of Native Initiatives at the Milwaukee Art Museum, a team dedicated to ensuring that Indigenous cultures, resilience, and art are respectfully represented and celebrated throughout the Museum. Pate received a BFA in art history from the Kansas City Art Institute and an M.A. in curatorial studies from the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste–Städelschule and Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt.

Kenn Cook Jr., Artist and Archivist 

Kenn Cook Jr. (American, b. 1988) is a Chicago-based artist and culture keeper whose work centers on storytelling, memory, and the preservation of Black cultural life. Raised on Chicago’s West Side, he uses photography to create an intimate record of the people, neighborhoods, and traditions that continue to shape the community he calls home. Through long-term documentary projects, his work explores place, belonging, and the enduring power of everyday life.

His work has been featured in The New York Times, NPR, and the Chicago Sun-Times, and he has worked with the Magnum Foundation. His photographs are held in the permanent collection of the Museum of Contemporary Photography. Cook is a recipient of the 2024 LensCulture Emerging Talent Award and the 2025–26 Filter Photo Fellowship, and has received artist residencies with Legler Regional Library and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Nichols Tower program.

Saturday, September 26th 

Susan Aurinko, Curator and Artist

Photographer Susan Aurinko has shown her work in France, Italy, Austria, India, and in the US.  Her photographs are included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Loyola University Museum of Art, and the Union League of Club Chicago as well as many private collections in France, Italy, India, the UK, Monaco, and across the US.  Three books of her work have been published; Searching for Jehanne – The Joan of Arc Project, Still Point, India, and Never Sated.  Her images appear on the covers of numerous novels and anthologies in the US and the UK. As a curator, she has created over 200 exhibitions including shows for both the Danish and Japanese Governments and has taught workshops in the US and Canada.

Gregory Harris, Donald and Marilyn Keough Family Curator of Photography at High Museum 

Gregory Harris is the Donald and Marilyn Keough Family Curator of Photography at High Museum of Art in Atlanta. He is a specialist in contemporary photography with a particular interest in documentary practice. Since joining the High in 2016, Harris has curated over two dozen exhibitions that consider an array of topics, including notions of truth in contemporary photography, the intersections of photography and self-taught art, and distinct history of photography in the American South. His recent publications include Mimi Plumb: Blazing Light (Radius Books, 2026), A Long Arc: Photography and the American South since 1845 (Aperture, 2023), Evelyn Hofer: Eyes on the City (High Museum of Art and Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2023), and Walks to the Paradise Garden (Institute 193, 2018), and he has contributed essays to monographs by Mark Steinmetz, Amy Elkins, Matthew Brandt, and Paul D'Amato. Harris was previously the Assistant Curator at the DePaul Art Museum in Chicago and also held curatorial positions at the Art Institute of Chicago. He earned a BFA in photography from Columbia College Chicago and an MA in art history from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.