Juror's Statement 

When the photoplace Gallery reached out to me and asked if I would juror an exhibition titled “Ruins and Remnants”, I wondered if I could take on the task after having just lived through the Los Angeles fires. The experience of the fires was relentless, not like other natural disasters that happen in a day, this was day after day of emotionally exhausting trauma. So many friends lost everything, many more were evacuated for days and weeks. This event came on the heels of the terrible disasters in North Carolina and Florida and other global traumas. I am so grateful to the photoplace Gallery for donating a portion of the submission monies to our fundraiser for Los Angeles photographers who lost everything. I am also grateful to be part of a community that supports each other and cares.

For this exhibition, I spent days and days looking at photographs of devastation, considering our country and parts of the world in ruin, communities that were abandoned due to lack of industry or opportunity, homes that had fallen into disrepair as the land reclaimed itself, signs of life where the homeless were finding shelter, and remnants of things left behind. This was not a joyful experience, but it was a profound one. How do we find beauty in loss and decay? After I looked at thousands of images of abandoned houses and businesses, rust and rot, the broken and the bleak, to be honest, it made me worry about the future.

With so many submissions, it was next to impossible to winnow the selections down to 35 for gallery walls and 50 for the online gallery exhibition. Sometimes photographers are drawn to a scene or an event because it is so compelling, they have to document the moment. It’s a shiny object of sorts, one that attracts our gaze and makes us click the shutter. With this jurying, I looked beyond the shiny object to consider the quality of the work. Was it well composed, not over processed, did it honor the subject and also elevate it through light, point of view, and deep consideration?

The photograph that garnered the Juror’s Award was by Leslie Gleim, one of several that she submitted -- all otherworldly and compelling. I was drawn to not only the subject matter, but the quality of the photograph. It had mystery and beauty and a quality of not knowing.

The Director’s Award went to Kip Harris for his stunning capture of Machu Picchu. It holds so many small moments of light and shadow, natural elements of clouds and sky caught just at the right moment, and a composition that is perfection. Truly a masterpiece.

There were literally dozens and dozens more photographs that were wall worthy and having to make the final decisions was extremely difficult. Please know that I wish we could have shared a much more expansive exhibition, and that so much excellent work will have to wait for another opportunity. Thank you so much for sharing your amazing photographs. It’s been an honor to consider it all.

-Aline Smithson

About the Juror

Aline Smithson is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and editor based in Los Angeles, California. Her practice examines the archetypal foundations of the creative impulse and she uses humor and pathos to explore the performative potential of photography. She received a BA in Art from the University of California at Santa Barbara and was accepted into the College of Creative Studies, studying under artists such as William Wegman, Allen Rupersburg, and Charles Garabedian. After a career as a New York Fashion Editor working alongside some the greats of fashion photography, Smithson returned to Los Angeles and her own artistic practice.

She has exhibited widely including over 40 solo shows at institutions such as the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Fort Collins Museum of Contemporary Art, the Shanghai, Lishui, and Pingyqo Festivals in China, The Rayko Photo Center in San Francisco, the Center of Fine Art Photography in Colorado, the Tagomago Gallery in Barcelona and Paris, and the Arnika Dawkins Gallery in Atlanta. In addition, her work is held in a number of public collections and her photographs have been featured in numerous publications including The New York Times, The New Yorker, PDN (cover), the PDN Photo Annual, Communication Arts Photo Annual, Harper’s, Eyemazing, Soura, Visura, Shots, Pozytyw, and Silvershotz magazines.

Smithson is the Founder and Editor- in-Chief of Lenscratch, a daily journal on photography. She has been an educator at the Los Angeles Center of Photography since 2001 and her teaching spans the globe. In 2012, Smithson received the Rising Star Award through the Griffin Museum of Photography for her contributions to the photographic community and also received the prestigious Excellence in Teaching Award from CENTER. In 2014 and 2019, Smithson’s work was selected for the Critical Mass Top 50.

In 2015, the Magenta Foundation published her first significant monograph, Self & Others: Portrait as Autobiography. In 2016, the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum commissioned Smithson to a series of portraits for the Faces of Our Planet Exhibition. In the Fall of 2018 and again in 2019, her work was selected as a finalist in the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize and exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in London. In 2019, Kris Graves Projects commissioned her to create the book LOST II: Los Angeles that is now sold out. Peanut Press Publishing released her monograph, Fugue State in Fall of 2021, also sold out. Her books are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Getty Museum, the Los Angeles Contemporary Art Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, London, the Metropolitan Museum, the Guggenheim, among others. In 2022, Smithson was honored as a Hasselblad Heroine. With the exception of her cell phone, she only shoots film.

More about Aline Smithson: http://alinesmithson.com/
More about Lenscratch: http://lenscratch.com/

Call for Entries

This exhibit explores the evocative theme of abandoned architecture and the traces left by humanity. We seek to showcase images that reveal the stories etched into architectural spaces and the objects left behind—the marks, structures, and artifacts that speak to our histories and inspire contemplation. From crumbling factories and forgotten homes to discarded tools and personal belongings, these remnants of human presence evoke a sense of time’s passage and humanity’s impermanence. This is a call to preserve these fleeting spaces and objects through photography before they fade, rot, or crumble into obscurity.

PhotoPlace gallery would like to support those affected by wildfires in LA with a donation of 10% of submission fees for the exhibit. If you would like to donate or learn how to help you can visit the link below.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/donate-to-la-photographers-impacted-by-fires

We are honored to have Aline Smithson as juror for Ruins and Remnants. She will select up to 35 images for exhibition in our Middlebury, Vermont gallery and another 40 images for our Online Gallery. All 75 images will be reproduced in the exhibition catalog and remain permanently on our website, and be promoted on social media with links to photographer’s URL. 

Information about our printing service and free matting and framing here.

Banner image: William Karl Valentine

williamkarlvalentine.com

Click to enlarge

Aline Smithson

Barbara Erlandson

Janet Cruz