2025 Reviewers
We are honored to host this year’s distinguished Portfolio Reviewers
Reviewers are listed below in alphabetical order by last name. Please familiarize yourself with their background and expertise. A ranking form and a brief description of their interests will be emailed to you.
Patrick Bova and Lucas Regazzi comprise april april, an art gallery located in the Regent Square neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the borough of Wilkinsburg. april april represents and exhibits a comprehensive range of practices with an artist-driven curatorial sensibility. It was founded by Patrick Bova and Lucas Regazzi in 2021. From 2021-2024, the gallery operated as a project space in the front room of their apartment in Brooklyn, New York. april april is a member of the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA).
Maura Friedman is a senior photo editor at New York Magazine.
Previously, she worked as a senior photo editor at National Geographic and as an independent visual journalist producing photo and video stories across the Southeast United States.
Polly Gaillard is an accomplished arts professional with a distinguished career in fine art photography. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from the University of South Carolina and a Master of Fine Arts in Visual Art from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, combining a strong foundation in communication with a deep understanding of the visual arts.
Her career spans over a decade of teaching photography and art at institutions such as Furman University, Anderson University, the University of Georgia, the University of New Orleans, and Delta State University. She has also led study-abroad programs in Prague and Italy, enriching students’ artistic and cultural perspectives.
As a fine art photographer, Polly has exhibited her work in solo and group shows across the United States, participated in national portfolio reviews, and published an artist book. Currently, she serves as a juror for fine art exhibitions and has contributed extensively as a writer, exploring photography, creative processes, and the challenges artists face in competitive environments.
Polly is the Program Director at Photolucida, where she oversees the Critical Mass international photography competition and serves as a juror. Her leadership has strengthened the organization’s visibility and supported emerging artists. Based in Greenville, SC, Polly balances her passion for the arts with expertise in arts administration and nonprofit leadership.
Kris Graves (b. 1982 New York, NY) is an artist and publisher based in New York and California. Graves creates artwork that deals with societal problems and aims to use art as a means to inform people about cultural issues. KGP MONOLITH collaborates with artists to create limited edition publications and archival prints, focusing on contemporary photography and works on paper that address issues of race, identity, equity, gender, sexuality, and class.
Michael Itkoff is a publisher, creative consultant and former Chief Content Officer at Britelite Immersive. Michael Cofounded the internationally-celebrated art book publishing house, Daylight as well as content experience platform, Fabl.
For nearly twenty years, Michael has been a leader in publishing both digital and print media.
Along the way, Michael has written for the NYTimes Lens blog, Art Asia Pacific, Nueva Luz, Conscientious blog and the Forward. Michael’s photographic and video work is in public and private collections in the United States and his work has appeared on the covers of Orion, Katalog, Next City and Philadelphia Weekly. Michael was the recipient of the Howard Chapnick Grant for the Advancement of Photojournalism (2006), a Creative Artists Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Arts Council (2007), and a Puffin Foundation Grant (2008). Michael’s monograph Street Portraits was published by Charta Editions in 2009.
Maria L. Kelly is the Assistant Curator of Photography at the High Museum of Art. During her time at the High, Maria has helped organize more than twenty-five photography installations. Her exhibitions include “Tyler Mitchell: Idyllic Space” (2024), “Underexposed: Women Photographers from the Collection” (2021), “What Is Near: Reflections on Home” (2016), and “Helen Levitt: In the Street” (2015), and she was the venue curator for the traveling exhibitions “Deana Lawson” (2022) and “André Kertész: Postcards from Paris” (2022). She has also independently curated exhibitions at the Swan Coach House Gallery and Columbus State University.
Maria earned an M.A. from Columbia University and a B.A. from the University of Georgia, both in art history. She has held positions at The Sir Elton John Photography Collection and the Brooklyn Museum and internships at The Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Georgia Museum of Art.
Maria is most interested in reviewing work by artists looking for dialogue for in-progress or recently completed bodies of work with a strong conceptual element. She has particular interest in work employing alternative processes, considering identity, concerning the environment, or engaging with archives.
Drew Leventhal is a photographer, publisher, and educator based in Providence, Rhode Island. Drew’s personal work focuses on the relationships between history, memory, and identity. Through Valley Books, Drew publishes small run, hand made photography monographs.
Jacksone Fine Art, Gallery Director
Areli Navarro Magallónd received her BA in Art History and English Literature from Rice University. As a Houston-based artist, writer, and curator, she is the Exhibitions and Programs Coordinator at Houston Center for Photography and Exhibitions Curator at Casa Luz creative studio. She has previously worked with the the 2024 Texas Biennial, the Menil Drawing Institute, DiverseWorks, and ART IS BOND. gallery.
Karen Marshall, chair of the Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism Program is a documentary photographer whose work focuses on the psychological lives of her subjects within the social landscape. Her seminal project Between Girls, that articulates the coming of age of a group of urban middle class teenagers, following them from high school into adulthood 30 years later was published by Kehrer Verlag in 2021. Her photographs have appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, the London Sunday Times, CNN, The Atlantic, ID Vice, Buzzfeed, Konbini Arts, Juxtapoz, Photobook Journal, NPR Picture Show, Blind, New York Magazine, and GUP Magazine, among others. She has exhibited in solo and group shows throughout the United States, Germany, Austria, Canada, Israel, the Philippines, China and Colombia. Marshall is the recipient of artist fellowships and sponsorships through the New York Foundation for The Arts, as well as grants and support from private foundations. Nominated for a Prix Picet in 2011, her work is part of several collections including the Feminist Artbase at the Brooklyn Museum. Marshall has been faculty at ICP for over two decades, is an Associate professor (adjunct) at New York University, guest faculty in the MFA program at the Maine Media College and has taught numerous workshops internationally that focus on visual storytelling.
Michael James O’Brien is a renowned American photographer and poet having produced a diverse body of photographic work from still lifes and portraits to commercial work and art documentation. He received his MFA from Yale University where he studied in the 1970s with Walker Evans. Later he became an associate professor of photography at Kenyon College in Ohio and taught at the New School in New York City in the mid-1980s.
He is currently the Chairman of the Photography Department at the Savannah College of Art and Design.
In 1993 he began a collaboration with the artist Matthew Barney creating a photographic parallel to Barney’s Drawing Restraint 7 and Cremaster 1, 2, 4, 5. These works have been exhibited at the Musee Moderne in Paris in 2002 and at the Guggenheim in New York in 2003. His portrait of the artist duo Gilbert and George is in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in London. O’Brien’s work has been commissioned by periodicals such as The New Yorker, Departures, Rolling Stone, Financial Times, Elle Décor, The New York Times, L’Uomo Vogue, Travel & Leisure, Conde Nast Traveler, and by advertising clients including Bergdorf Goodman, Thierry Mugler, Polo Ralph Lauren, and Saks Fifth Avenue.
An accomplished and published poet, O’Brien has been editor-at-large of the poetry periodical Verbal Abuse since its inception in 1993. His book of photographs, “Girlfriend: Men, Women & Drag” was published by Random House in 1999. He was Creative Director of Designers against AIDS in 2010, co-editing the book “Designers against Aids: The First Decade,” published by Ludion.
Jacob O’Kelley is an Atlanta-based arts administrator. He is the Artistic Director at Swan Coach House Gallery. Recent independent public art projects include SITE, a site-specific art activation across 12 acres of The Goat Farm Arts Center during Atlanta Art Week. O’Kelley’s previous curatorial exhibitions include Currents and Interconnect at Echo Contemporary, in-habit at Westobou, Offerings at Offerings, and Local Stories with Dashboard and A&E Atlanta. He recently completed an Arts Administration Residency with Hambidge Arts Center.
He co-founded ShowerHaus, an experimental, curatorial project space at The Goat Farm Arts Center in 2018. ShowerHaus curated multiple exhibitions at their gallery in addition to shows at Swan Coach House Gallery and Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta. They are perhaps most remembered for their public art project, The High Rise Show, a four-floor exhibition in a skyscraper in Downtown Atlanta.
He received his BFA in Drawing and Painting from Georgia State University. He is also a contributor to Burnaway and Art Papers.
Jordan Putt is a photographer whose work responds to issues of place, identity, and community. He earned a BA in Psychology from Northern Arizona University in 2014, and an MFA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago in 2020. His work has been exhibited in the Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson; Filter Space, Chicago; House of Lucie, Los Angeles; and Hyde Park Arts Center, Chicago; among others. He was a 2022 recipient of the Research and Development Grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts and a 2023 finalist for the Lucie Photo Book Prize. Previously Jordan has held positions at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago and the Sir Elton John Photography Collection. Jordan is currently based in Atlanta, GA, where he is an Visiting Lecturer of Photography at Georgia State University, and a 2023-2025 studio resident for The Creatives Project.
Madison Reid an associate visuals editor at Vanity Fair, commissioning photography and providing photo research for stories about art, culture, books, politics, current events, and more.
Madison also writes about photobooks and exhibitions–including conversations with Catherine Opie, Zanele Muholi, and critic Vince Aletti. She was previously an Aperture Foundation books work scholar and a Magnum Photos archive intern.
C. Rose Smith, the Assistant Curator of Photography at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art in Memphis, TN, is a curator with a profound commitment. Her dedication is not just to the art form but also to the artists themselves. Smith’s mission is to elevate and expand the voices of unexplored artists within the photography canon. Her research spans 19th–early 20th-century portrait studios in the US South, the history of Black and African-American photographers in the Americas and Europe, and women in photography, past and present. In previous roles, she assisted in rotating permanent collection exhibitions and managing the photography collection at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY. She holds a B.F.A. in Photography from the Savannah College of Art and Design and an MFA in Photography from Rochester Institute of Technology.
Barbara Tannenbaum, Chair, Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs and Curator of Photography at the Cleveland Museum of Art, has organized over 125 exhibitions during her four-decade career as a curator and academic. She has curated solo shows of the work of numerous living artists, including Aaron Rothman, TR Ericsson, Hank Willis Thomas, and Lois Conner. From 1985 through 2011, Tannenbaum was chief curator at the Akron Art Museum, where she grew the photography collection from 500 to 2,500 works and organized the first traveling solo museum exhibition of the work of Adam Fuss.
