2025 PORTFOLIO REVIEWS
Dates: September 18 – 20, 2025
Location:
Columbia College Chicago Student Center | 754 S Wabash Ave
Early Bird Pricing:
5 for $350 | 8 for $480 | 12 for $600
Student Reviews:
$40/each (email caitlin@filterphoto.org with a copy of your Student ID to register)
Participants sign up for twenty-minute face-to-face portfolio reviews and receive constructive feedback, as well as information on getting their work exhibited and published. Reviews are for emerging and established photo-based artists looking to gain insight into their work and to expand their professional network.
For the full list of reviewers and to learn more about preparing for your reviews see below.
Registration opens May 21st for Filter Photo Members, and May 28th for the general public.
Dates: September 18th – 20th, 2025
Location:
Columbia College Chicago Student Center | 754 S Wabash Ave
Early Bird Pricing (through June 30th):
5 for $350 | 8 for $480 | 12 for $600
Student Reviews:
$40/each
(email caitlin@filterphoto.org with a copy of your Student ID to register)
2025 PORTFOLIO REVIEWS
September 18 – 21, 2024
Columbia College Chicago Student Center
REVIEWER BIOS
Tim Carpenter is a photographer, writer, and educator who works in Brooklyn and central Illinois. He is the author of several photobooks, among them Little (The Ice Plant); A month of Sundays (TIS books); Christmas Day, Bucks Pond Road (The Ice Plant); Local objects (The Ice Plant); township (TIS/dumbsaint); Bement grain (TIS/dumbsaint); Still feel gone (Deadbeat Club Press); The king of the birds (TIS books); and A house and a tree (TIS books). Tim received an MFA in Photography from the Hartford Art School in 2012. He is a faculty member of the Penumbra Foundation Long Term Photobook Program and serves as a mentor in the Image Threads Mentorship Program. Tim’s book-length essay “To photograph is to learn how to die” was published by The Ice Plant in Fall 2022.
Carpenter is most interested in reviewing documentary focused projects.
Nelson Chan was born in New Jersey to immigrant parents from Hong Kong and Taiwan and has spent most of his life between the States and Hong Kong. Having grown up between two continents, this immigrant experience influences the majority of his work. Nelson received his BFA and MFA from RISD and the Hartford Art School, respectively. He has been exhibited nationally and internationally at institutions such as the Museum of Chinese in America, New York, NY; Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA; The Print Center, Philadelphia, PA; Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany; and 798 Space, Beijing, China. His books are collected in the institutional libraries of the The MET, The Guggenheim, The Whitney, and MoMA, among others. Along with his photography, book publishing is another focus of his studio practice. He is co-founder of TIS books and is a Professor of Photography at the California College of the Arts.
Chan is most interested in reviewing fine art work, documentary projects, and photobooks.
SKYLARK EDITIONS is a non-profit publishing project based in Chicago that provides a platform for the creation and distribution of innovative photobooks by emerging and established artists.
Kelli Connell is an Editor at SKYLARK Editions, a non-profit publishing project based in Chicago that provides a platform for creating and distributing innovative photo books by emerging and established artists. Connell is an artist whose work investigates sexuality, gender, identity and photographer-sitter relationships. Her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the J Paul Getty Museum among others. Recent publications include Kelli Connell: Pictures for Charis (Aperture & Center for Creative Photography), PhotoWork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice (Aperture) and the monograph Kelli Connell: Double Life (DECODE Books). Connell has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, MacDowell, and The Center for Creative Photography.They are interested in reviewing work by LGBTQIA+ artists, BIPOC artists, and women artists, with a particular interest in photographers who live in the Midwest. They are also interested in seeing book dummies of completed projects and work that would translate in book form in non-traditional ways.
Gregory Harris is the Donald and Marilyn Keough Family Curator of Photography at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. He is a specialist in contemporary photography with a particular interest in documentary practice. Since joining the Museum in 2016, Harris has curated over a 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 South. He has grown the collection by more than 3,000 photographs, including major acquisitions by Deana Lawson, Paul Graham, and Zanele Muholi, and commissions by Jim Goldberg, Mark Steinmetz, and An-My Lê. 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. He is currently working on a centennial exhibition of Ralph Eugene Meatyard and solo exhibitions with Mimi Plumb and Richard Misrach.
Harris is interested in reviewing all kinds of fine art and documentary projects in any stage of development, with a particular interest in projects that are still in progress. He is currently working on exhibitions about recent approaches to documentary photography and the history of photography in the American South. He is less interested in fashion, commercial, and editorial work.
Sara Ickow is the Associate Director of Exhibitions at the International Center of Photography, where she has been a curator on exhibitions including Gillian Laub: Family Matters; Diana Markosian: Santa Barbara; ICP at 50: From the Collection, 1845–2019; and To Conjure: New Archives in Recent Photography. Before this, she worked as a Curatorial Assistant and Collections Manager at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in the Department of Photographs. She is also the Managing Director for Women Photograph. Sara holds an MA in Art History from NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts.
Ickow is most interested in reviewing recent and new work, with a particular interest in documentary projects, photojournalism, fine art, and alternative practices.
Samantha Johnston has been the Executive Director and Curator at the Colorado Photographic Arts Center since 2015. She holds a certificate in Arts Development and Program Management from the University of Denver, an MFA from Lesley University College of Art & Design, and a BFA from Alfred University. Prior to joining CPAC, she taught photography and visual arts for 12 years at high schools in Boston and Denver.
She has curated exhibitions with contemporary artists such as Jess T. Dugan, Daniel Coburn, Barbara Ciurej & Lindsay Lochman, and Zora Murff. Samantha has served as a reviewer at Houston FotoFest, Review Santa Fe, PhotoPlus New York, Medium, Month of Photography Denver (MOP), Filter Photo Festival, and PhotoLucida. She has juried several exhibitions including Critical Mass and The Fence.
CPAC is a not-for-profit organization that is dedicated to fostering the understanding and appreciation of photography in all forms and concepts through exhibitions, education, and community outreach. CPAC also organizes the Month of Photography Denver (MOP) a biennial festival that celebrates the photographic medium through public exhibitions, events, and programs at more than 75 museums, galleries, and other participating spaces across the Denver Metro region.
Johnston is looking for photo-based artists for solo and group exhibition opportunities at CPAC’s gallery. She is interested in reviewing a wide variety of work including non-traditional photo based projects, works in progress, and finished projects. She is open to discussions about editing, sequencing, and project development.Nick Larsen is an artist and book editor living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He studied at the University of Nevada, Reno and the Ohio State University, where he received his MFA in Sculpture. Larsen has had over a dozen solo and collaborative exhibitions, including, most recently, Old Haunts, Lower Reaches (Nevada Museum of Art, 2024) and been a part of a number of notable group exhibitions, including several editions of New American Paintings. Since 2022, he has been the managing editor at Radius Books, a non-profit art book publisher in Santa Fe, where he has overseen the publication of over forty-five photography, fine art, architecture, and poetry books.
Larsen is most interested in reviewing fine art photography or mixed media work that incorporates photographic processes. He is less interested in seeing photojournalism or strictly documentary work.
Shana Lopes, PhD, is an Assistant Curator of Photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Born and raised in San Francisco, she earned her doctorate in art history from Rutgers University, specializing in the history of photography. Over the past fifteen years, she has gained curatorial experience at the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. She has recently curated or co-curated exhibitions including Constellations: Photographs in Dialogue, Sightlines: Photographs from the Collection, Sea Change, A Living for Us All: Artists and the WPA, and Zanele Muholi: Eye Me. She is currently working on the upcoming exhibition Alejandro Cartagena: Ground Rules, which will be accompanied by a book from Aperture. Her writing has appeared in History of Photography, Art Journal, and 1000 Words.
Lopes is not interested in reviewing commercial or editorial work.
Richard McCabe is a curator, photographer and writer based in New Orleans. He was born in England and grew up in the American South. In 1998, he received an MFA in Studio Art from Florida State University. He has taught Photography as an adjunct professor at: Pratt Institute, New York City, Montclair State University, Montclair, New Jersey, Fairfield University, Fairfield, Connecticut and Xavier University, New Orleans, Louisiana.
Since 2011, he has been the Curator of Photography at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. He has organized and curated over 40 exhibitions including: Seeing Beyond the Ordinary, The Mythology of Florida, The Rising, Eudora Welty: Photographs from the 1930s - 40s, The Colourful South, Self-Processing: Instant Photography, New Southern Photography, Memory is a Strange Bell: The Art of William Christenberry and Spell, Time, Practice, American, Body: The Work of RaMell Ross.
McCabe’s thoughts and writings on photography have been published in the New York Times, Time, National Public Radio(NPR), Louisiana Cultural Vistas, Spot, The Bitter Southerner, HOTSHOE and LENSCRATCH. In 2018, he contributed the introduction essay, The Reality on the Ground, for the University of New Orleans press publication, New Southern Photography: Images of the Twenty-first Century South. In 2019 he wrote the introduction essay for the Cattywampus press publication: Devin Lunsford: All the Place You’ve Got, and the essay, The North Star, for the Ogden Museum publication, Memory is a Strange Bell: The Art of William Christenberry.
McCabe is most interested in reviewing photography about the American South, alternative processes, and narrative photography.
Luciano Medrano has served as a director at PATRON since 2022, a gallery focussing on emerging to mid career artists and conceptual practices. He has worked with artists to exhibition their work in international art fairs, institutional exhibitions, and various biennials. He has managed and curated corporate art collections of Fortune 10 companies in Texas, and was previously worked in the eduction department at the Dallas Museum of Art. Medrano is a member of the Society for Contemporary Art at The Art Institute of Chicago.
He is interested in reviewing compelling, personal narratives and poetic, conceptual work.
C. Meier (they/them) is a non-binary artist and curator based in Portland, OR. As Exhibitions Director at Blue Sky, Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts, they have organized over 80 photographic exhibitions since 2021. Additionally, Meier co-curated the 2017 exhibition re:collection at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago (MoCP), and curated the 2023 exhibition Size Matters for Medium Photo, San Diego. Other professional roles include Curatorial Assistant (2015-2017) at the MoCP, Collections Manager / Registrar (2018-2020) at the MoCP, and Studio Assistant to Barbara Kasten (2019-2020).
Meier’s own art practice explores materiality, reveling in the hybridization of processes including drawing and photographic methods. They are especially interested in alternative and cameraless approaches to photography. Meier earned their MFA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago (2017) and BFA in Studio Art from Pacific Lutheran University (2004). They have exhibited at Hyde Park Art Center, Mana Contemporary (Chicago), Filter Space, Nine Gallery, Solas Gallery, Carnation Contemporary, among others, and their work is part of the Permanent Collection of Pacific Lutheran University (Tacoma, WA).
Meier is particularly interested in reviewing alternative approaches that push processes and materiality.
Emilia Mickevicius, PhD, is the Norton Family Assistant Curator of Photography, a dual appointment shared between the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson and Phoenix Art Museum. In her role, she primarily draws from the CCP's permanent collection to craft exhibitions for audiences in Phoenix. Her recent and upcoming projects include exhibitions on Laura Aguilar and Richard Avedon, photographic humor, the body, and other topics. From 2019 to 2023, Emmy worked in the photography department at SFMOMA, where she contributed to numerous exhibitions of work by historical and living artists.
Mickevicius is most interested in reviewing work in progress, and is particularly interested in seeing work with strong conceptual and/or personal orientation. She is not interested in reviewing traditional nudes or landscapes.
Laura Sackett is the creative director and co-founder of LensCulture, one of the leading sites committed to discovering and publishing the best in the contemporary photography. She leads all aspects of design including strategy, brand, website, print, communications, screenings and exhibitions. Besides leading the creative direction for LensCulture, she also designs and co-curates LensCulture exhibitions and the online galleries. Laura is a juror, reviewer & nominator in several international Photo Awards and Festivals. She is a founding Board Member of PhotoAlliance, and earned an MFA in photography from the California College of the Arts. She currently lives in Oakland, CA.
Sackett is open to reviewing work at all levels. She can provide feedback on projects that are still in the creative or conceptual phase, as well as provide specific marketing advice for finished projects.
C. Rose Smith is a photographic artist and the Assistant Curator of Photography at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art in Memphis, TN. In both practices, she uses photography to assemble critical dialogues on the power of perspective and visibility.
Her dedication is not only to the art form, but also to the artists themselves. Smith's mission is to care for, elevate, and expand the voices of unexplored artists in photography history. In her current curatorial role, she is preserving and making accessible a photo collection by the Hooks Brothers Photography Studio, which enlivened the image of Memphis’s black community from 1907 to 1984. Her research spans nineteenth and early twentieth-century portrait studios in the U.S. South, black photographers in the Americas and Europe, and women in photography, past and present.
In previous roles, she assisted in rotating permanent collection exhibitions and managed the photography collection at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York. She holds an MFA in Photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology, a certificate in photography preservation from the Gawain Weaver Conservation Lab, and a BFA in Photography from the Savannah College of Art and Design.
Smith is interested in reviewing conceptual and experimental work, as well as work utilizing archival practices or alternative processes. Smith is not interested in seeing photojournalism or non-conceptual nudity.
Asha Iman Veal is Associate Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Photography. Her exhibitions We Imagine Past the Sky (if a world without us) (2026), LOVE: Still Not the Lesser (2023), and Beautiful Diaspora/You Are Not the Lesser Part (2022), brought together cross-diasporic conversations between global artists Tintin Wulia (Indonesia/Sweden), Dele Adeyemo (Scotland/Nigeria), Işıl Eğrikavuk (Germany/ Türkiye), Solène Gün (France), Kelvin Haizel of blaxTARLINES (Ghana), Cog•nate Collective (Mexico/US), Xyza Cruz Bacani (Philippines/Hong Kong), Widline Cadet (Haiti/US), Sunil Gupta (India/UK), and more. Her Chicago Architecture Biennial 2021 partner program RAISIN (vol. 1) commissioned several new artworks and generated community among more than 35 global artists, including Amanda Williams (US), Nayeli Vega (Germany/Mexico), Amy Sanchez Arteaga and Misael Diaz of Cognate Collective (Southern California/Mexico border region), and more.
Veal's additional exhibitions include: Everyone Wants to Know More / Beyond the Realm of Fantasy, MSU Faculty Triennial (2024), Shift: Music, Culture, Context, MoCP (2023), Martine Gutierrez, MoCP (2021), DREAM, Hyde Park Art Center (2022), The Tokyo Show: Black & Brown Are Beautiful, Hyde Park Art Center (2019), among others. She has been a recent exhibition juror for: Black Creativity, Griffin Museum of Science & Industry (2025), Portraits as Visual Repositories, Los Angeles Center of Photography (2024), Earth Photo, Forestry England & Royal Geographical Society London (2024), and more.
Asha Iman is frequently invited as a distinguished jury reviewer for national and international artist awards and residencies, including the American Academy in Rome / Terra Foundation Affiliated Fellowship, East African Photography Awards, Earth Photo Award by Forestry England and the Royal Geographical Society, Visual Studies Workshop NY, University of Chicago Arts + Public Life, 3Arts Chicago, Arts Work Fund Chicago, HARPO Foundation, and more. She has been an invited portfolio reviewer and crit panelist for the FORMAT International Photography Festival UK, Rencontres d'Arles France, FotoFest Houston, Belfast Photo Festival, University of Chicago Department of Visual Arts, Rhode Island School of Design, Chicago Artist Coalition, and others.
Veal has been a guest lecturer and panelist for international cultural institutions such as Stockholm University, Department of Culture and Aesthetics, GRAIN Projects UK, Pakhuis de Zwijger Amsterdam, Istituto Italiano di Cultura Chicago, Humanity In Action – Netherlands, San Diego State University, Midwest Art Historical Society, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and more.
Veal is not interested in reviewing sex scenes or nudes that are intended to satisfy the photographer's own social fetish.Jessie Wender is a Photo Editor at The New York Times on the Opinion desk. Prior to joining Opinion, she was a photo editor on the Culture desk, commissioning photography for dance, theater, art, and classical music. Jessie was also previously a photo editor of Past Tense, the publication's archival storytelling initiative. Jessie has worked at Apple, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Esquire, and Time Inc. Her commissions have been recognized by the American Society of Magazine Editors, American Photography, and the Society of Publication Designers. She loves working with artists and creative people, and supporting emerging photographers whenever possible.
Wender is interested in reviewing portraiture, documentary, still life and artistic projects.
Sasha Wolf represents some of the foremost photographic artists, facilitating the placement of their prints in museums, university collections, private and corporate collections, as well as individual homes. Sasha frequently reviews and judges work for prestigious art institutions, universities, and fairs, while also lecturing and conducting artist workshops nationwide on professional practices and project development.
Additionally, Sasha is the Founder and Executive Director of the PhotoWork Foundation, a nonprofit foundation established to provide arts-education and mentorship to photographic artists, working in the post-documentary tradition. Sasha’s book, PhotoWork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice, was published by Aperture in Fall 2019.
Wolf is interested in reviewing lyrical or post documentary bodies of work.
Lisa Woodward and Mia Dalglish work collaboratively as Co-Curators for Pictura Gallery, a non-profit contemporary photography space housed in the FAR Center for Contemporary Arts in Bloomington, IN. They have worked together for 15 years, producing a wide range of exhibitions and advising photographers through different phases of their careers.
Dalglish and Woodward are open to projects with the capacity to push past the boundaries of the frame and into broader installations. Pictura looks for opportunities to pair its photography shows with other creative mediums for some unexpected collaborations, including with poets, chefs, dancers, and musicians.
They can offer critique and feedback to strengthen work aesthetically and conceptually, help sort a new edit for consideration, or talk through ideas for display. Woodward and Dalglish are looking for exceptional projects for the gallery’s future exhibition programming and the Curious blog. If the work is a good fit, exhibition opportunities may be offered at a later date. They welcome reviewees to bring any specific questions or goals to their session.
They are most interested in seeing impeccable craft, a balance of aesthetic and conceptual concerns, and emotionally meaningful work with well-considered ideas. They are less interested in seeing still life projects of personal artifacts from the past, nudes, and strictly commercial work. Projects do not need to be completed to be considered but must show a high degree of thought and cohesion.
Lucas Zenk has been with the Stephen Daiter Gallery since 2006 and has served as the gallery director for over ten years. Interested in visual media since he was a teenager, he first pursued film studies at University of Massachusetts, and then attended the New England School of Photography in Boston. He was a cultural department intern at Magnum Photos in New York which introduced him to the commercial and gallery aspects of the medium. Along with photography he enjoys camping, reading, and watching television. He lives in Berwyn, Illinois with his family.
Zenk is most interested in reviewing documentary, conceptual, and experimental work.
You will be asked to submit your reviewer preferences in order from 1-15, 1 being who you would like to see the most. The date you register holds your place in line and priority is given to those who register early. Schedules will be released by late August / early September.
The best way to present your work is loose prints inside a clamshell portfolio box. Time is valuable while being reviewed and you want to be sure you can easily access each print and have the ability to edit as your review is being conducted.
A typical portfolio is comprised of tightly edited images in a project or series of 15-25 prints. Take into consideration what the final print size would be for exhibiting and if it is easy to carry and handle. You will be given a standard 6ft table to present your work to the reviewer and most people show prints between 11 x 14 to 20 x 24 inches.
FAQ
The best way to have the most success with your reviews is to practice and research. Be sure you are meeting with a reviewer who is interested in your work. A good way to ensure this is to read their bio, found on our reviewers’ page, and research what type of work they generally exhibit or publish. Be sure to allow enough time for the reviewer to critique and give advice.
To make the most out of your review you should plan to bring a business card, leave behind, or a promotional piece that has current contact information and an image from your project, or series, that is being reviewed. It is also important that this piece is easy for the reviewer to take with them and can easily fit in a standard folder or envelope. Bringing a pen and pad of paper is also very useful to take down information during your review.
Refunds will be processed with a 15% fee. No refunds will be given after August 1st.
You will be asked to submit your reviewer preferences in order from 1-15, 1 being who you would like to see the most. The date you register holds your place in line and priority is given to those who register early. Schedules will be released by late August / early September.
The best way to present your work is loose prints inside a clamshell portfolio box. Time is valuable while being reviewed and you want to be sure you can easily access each print and have the ability to edit as your review is being conducted.
A typical portfolio is comprised of tightly edited images in a project or series of 15-25 prints. Take into consideration what the final print size would be for exhibiting and if it is easy to carry and handle. You will be given a standard 6ft table to present your work to the reviewer and most people show prints between 11 x 14 to 20 x 24 inches.
The best way to have the most success with your reviews is to practice and research. Be sure you are meeting with a reviewer who is interested in your work. A good way to ensure this is to read his or her bio, found on our reviewers’ page, and research what type of work they generally exhibit or publish. Be sure to allow enough time for the reviewer to critique and give advice.
To make the most out of your review you should plan to bring a business card, leave behind, or a promotional piece that has current contact information and an image from your project, or series, that is being reviewed. It is also important that this piece is easy for the reviewer to take with them and can easily fit in a standard folder or envelope. Bringing a pen and pad of paper is also very useful to take down information during your review.
Refunds will be processed with a 15% fee. No refunds will be given after August 1st.