2025 Portfolio Reviewers
With More reviewer annoucements to come!
Alyssa Ortega Coppelman
Photo Editor/Photobook Consultant
Alyssa Ortega Coppelman is a photo editor and art director based in Austin, Texas. She is Art Researcher at the Oxford American magazine. Previously, she was Deputy Art Director at Harper's Magazine; and Archival Producer on 200+ episodes of PBS NewsHour's Emmy-nominated series, Brief But Spectacular, lending atypical visuals to interviews with a variety of guests, including various artists.
Working directly with photographers, Alyssa provides art direction for ongoing projects and shorter assignments; photobook editing and design consultation; and helps artists present their strongest work, for print, portfolio, web, book, or exhibition, in as cohesive and elegant a manner as possible. She is a visiting lecturer to undergraduate and graduate photography students and enjoys stripping away some of the mystery of how images make it to the screen or page.
Alyssa works with and searches regularly for photojournalism, fine art, collage, alternative process, and short and long projects. Traditional landscapes, nudes, and ethnographic work will not be a good fit for review with her, but she does appreciate projects that approach these subjects with a fresh, critical perspective. She can best help edit and sequence bodies of work and provide advice on reaching out to art directors and photo editors in the magazine world.
Christa Dix
Executive Director of the Griffin Museum of Photography
Crista Dix is the Executive Director of the Griffin Museum of Photography, assuming that role in January of 2022 after two years as the museum's Associate Director. The Griffin Museum of Photography produces approximately fifty exhibitions annually in its Winchester and satellite galleries across New England. The Griffin Museum is thrilled to be looking toward the future of contemporary works and projects revolving around photography. Our exhibition programs aim to bring photography off the walls supporting experiential and immersive projects. In 2024 the museum created new residency programs, scholarships and public art projects as part of the mission to enhance our connection to photography and outreach to our artists, patrons and public.
Before coming to the Griffin Museum in 2020, Ms. Dix spent fifteen years operating her own photography gallery, Wall Space Creative.
Dennis Kiel
Director of the Dishman Art Museum at Lamar University
Dennis Kiel has been the Director of the Dishman Art Museum at Lamar University for the past 9 years. He comes to the Dishman from Charlotte, North Carolina where he served as Chief Curator at The Light Factory Contemporary Museum of Photography and Film. Before joining The Light Factory, Kiel was the Associate Curator in the Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the Cincinnati Art Museum for 24 years. He also taught the History of Photography at Northern Kentucky University as an adjunct professor.
Kiel is looking for work to exhibit at the Dishman Art Museum as he is hoping to add more photography to the museum’s exhibition schedule. He is interested in looking at basically all areas of photography, especially street photography, photojournalism, and portraiture.
DEBORAH KLOCHKO
Director Emeritus—Museum of Photographic Arts
Deborah Klochko was the Lawrence S. Friedman Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Museum of Photographic Arts from 2006-2023. She has taught, lectured and written extensively on photography and has curated more than 35 exhibitions throughout her career. Klochko was the executive editor of See, an award-winning journal of visual culture, and is the founder of Speaking of Light: Oral Histories of American Photographers. She is the author of Picturing Eden and co-authored both Moment of Seeing: Minor White at the California School of Fine Arts and Create and Be Recognized: Photography on the Edge, in addition to 15 other publications and numerous essays. Most recently, Klochko curated the traveling exhibition Moment in Time: A Collection of Photographs for Bank of America, The Time Between: The Sequences of Minor White, Encounters: Photographs by Jed Fielding, Storyteller: Work by Holly Roberts, and Picture This: Recent Acquistions.
Daniel George
Curator, Lenscratch
Daniel George is an artist, educator, and photo editor based out of Utah. In his personal creative practice, he explores the ways in which cultural forces shaped by religious, political, and social ideologies effect the identity of place, community, and resident individuals. Since 2018, Daniel has served as the Submissions Editor and contributing writer for Lenscratch, an online platform dedicated to supporting and celebrating the photographic arts and photographic artists through exposure, discussion, community collaboration, and education.
Daniel is interested in reviewing well-developed projects of all photographic genres that fall under the fine-art umbrella—particularly those that illustrate compelling themes and demonstrate innovative uses of the medium (no commercial or stock photography). He is happy to provide feedback on projects at any stage of development. Ultimately, Daniel is looking for artists to work with and feature on Lenscratch.
Dennis Keeley
Photographer, Photo Editor
Dennis Keeley has worked as an artist, photographer, educator, and writer for more than 40 years. His work has been exhibited in numerous one person and group shows and is published internationally in studies concerning urban circumstance and condition.
He began his career as one of an established group of photographers in the field of music portraiture. His portraits of musicians were utilized in hundreds of album and cd covers. He has also worked for the J. Paul Getty Center Conservation and Research Institute.
In addition to being the former Photo Editor of the LA Weekly, Chair of the Photography and Imaging program at Art Center College of Design for almost twenty years, he was also Vice President of the board at the Angels Gate Cultural Center in San Pedro.
TITUS BROOKS HEAGINS
Instructor and Educator, Light Factory, Charlotte
Titus Brooks Heagins, who recently moved from Durham to Charlotte, holds a BA degree in political science from Duke University in Durham and an MFA degree from the School of Art and Design at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. His work can be found in the collections of the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum, Washington, DC, the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, and the Casa de Africa, Havana, Cuba, among others.
“Contemporary Southern identity is complex. Black Southern identity is layered with historical truths, with equal amounts of lies and betrayals. My images capture the essence of the South and her dark people. My calling is to visually interrogate the spirit of existing within the margins of a placid society and those who are “othered” by past structural norms.
I am convinced that photography can be redemptive, as images free us to see who we are, outside ourselves, if but momentarily. If it visualizes the expressions that hold sway over a population; and endeavors to capture the people, and how they inhabit their own place, even if that space is a dream.
What is not a dream, is that we live in a realm where despair and hope coexist. I’ve tried to make a portrait in and out of that space. The images become two-dimensional provocations of silent statements and are unavoidable confrontations between the viewer and sitter.” – Titus Brooks Heagins
Michael Kirchoff
Photographer, Editor in Chief at Analog Forever Magazine
Michael Kirchoff is a photographic artist, Editor-in-Chief at Analog Forever Magazine, Founding Editor at Catalyst: Interviews, Co-Host of The Diffusion Tapes podcast, and advocate for the photographic arts. Based in Los Angeles, Michael conducts artist interviews while investigating the creative process, presents written feature articles, and curates fine art bodies of work from emerging and mid-career photographic artists worldwide for all entities.
In addition, Michael is an independent curator and juror for a number of organizations, non-profits, and galleries in the U.S. and abroad, including Photolucida’s Critical Mass. During his years on the Board of Directors (2006-2016) at the American Photographic Artists L.A. Chapter (APA/LA), his guidance produced events and artist lectures for commercial and fine art photographers alike. His consulting, training, and overall support of his fellow photographic artist continues with assistance in constructing ones vision, reviewing portfolios, and sourcing exhibition opportunities.
Michael seeks portfolios that demonstrate a cohesive and thoughtfully edited body of work with an emphasis on the creative, either stylistically or thematically. Film-based and analog process work are of particular interest for fine art and documentary photography, but are not a requirement in seeking guidance or opportunities.
BRYCE LANKARD
Photo Educator, Photographer, Click! Director Emeritus
Bryce Lankard is a North Carolina native and graduate of UNC–Chapel Hill. His work has been published in numerous magazines, including the Village Voice and the New York Times Magazine. In 1995 he cofounded Tribe Magazine in New Orleans, serving as creative director. After Hurricane Katrina, he cofounded the nonprofit New Orleans Photo Alliance. Since returning to North Carolina, he has helped develop and coordinate what is now the Click! Triangle Photography Festival. His most recent project, Drawn to Water, debuted as a solo exhibition at Flanders Gallery in Raleigh in October 2016.
Mary Anne Redding
Senior Curator, Turchin Center for the Visual Arts Appalachian State University
Mary Anne Redding is a visual arts curator and writer and serves as the curator of the Turchin Center. She has written and published numerous essays on photography and contemporary art. Before taking her most recent post as the Curator at the Turchin Center, Redding was the Curator at the Sioux City Art Center in Sioux City, Iowa. Past positions include working as the Curator of the Marion Center for Photographic Arts and the Chair of the Photography Department at Santa Fe University of Art & Design, and as the Curator of Photography for the Palace of the Governors/New Mexico History Museum.
MJ SHARP
Photographer, Photo Educator
Photographer MJ Sharp is an artist and educator based in Durham, North Carolina. She was a visiting Fulbright Scholar at the University of Exeter, UK, for the 2021/2022 academic year pursuing the art/science collaboration Our Disappearing Darkness and Recreating True Night. She was a Lecturing Fellow at The Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University from 2012 — 2022. She served on the Faculty Advisory Committee of the Nasher Museum of Art and was also a founding member of the Duke Faculty Union.
Her artwork is included in the collections of The Akron Art Museum, The Asheville Museum of Art, The North Carolina Museum of Art, The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, The Ackland Museum at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, The Henry-Copeland Art Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and The Cassilhaus Collection.
We would like to thank all our previous reviewers. Especially those who braved the virtual frontier these last two years. Without your expertise and generosity we simply couldn’t do this.