“Mary Ann Garcia shares images from her youth in the Catholic school on mission grounds." © Robert Pluma
Project Presentations
CENTER highlights excellence and innovative contributions to the field each year with Award and Project Grant opportunities. As part of the career advancement packages, the selected photographers are invited to share an intimate view of their process and projects covering today’s most critical issues.
Guided by an open discussion and audience Q&A, we look forward to hosting this in-person event and hope you can join us on November 3 with moderator Evan Anderman to learn more about the 2024 selected projects.
WHEN • Sunday, November 3, from 11:00 AM - 4:00 PM MT
WHERE • Hosted in person at the La Fonda on the Plaza Hotel downtown Santa Fe and Livestream with Zoom
HOW • Free and Public
MODERATOR • Evan Anderman, Ph.D. (b. 1964 Denver, CO) is a Denver-based social landscape photographer who seeks to challenge the intricate relationship between human development and the natural world. His aerial and terrestrial photography endeavors to bring into focus the difficult to see widespread elements of the way our society uses the land. His work can be found in the collection of the Denver Art Museum and many private collections across the country and has been exhibited at institutions nationally and internationally. He received a BSE in Geological Engineering from Princeton University and an MSE and Ph.D. in Geological Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines.
He has served on numerous non-profit boards, and as an alumnus and mentor for Review Santa Fe, Anderman is currently the Vice-President of the Board of CENTER in Santa Fe, NM.
Transitional Realms • Sara Abbaspour
2024 PROJECT DEVELOPMENT GRANT
Sara Abbaspour on Observing and Creating a Vision of Contemporary Iran
Sara Abbaspour describes how she makes, edits, and sequences the images in her project, Transitional Realms. Made in the wake of Iran’s ongoing “Women, Life, Freedom” social justice movement, her collaborative portraits capture women reclaiming their own image.
Featured image - © Sara Abbaspour
Where They Still Remain • Austin Bryant
2024 PROJECT LAUNCH GRANT
Austin Bryant on Investigating Martha’s Vineyard’s Native American and Black Histories
Austin Bryant explains his personal connection to the erased stories of the connection between the Wampanoag and African American communities on Martha’s Vineyard. Through his use of original photography, archival research, and historic texts, he captures how he used his own photography, archival materials, and altered text to tell an American tale that resonates universally.
Featured image - © Austin Bryant
Matthew Finley on Imagining a Life of Love and Acceptance
Matthew Finley portrays the imagined life for an uncle he never knew through archival images he subtly alters. His fictional snapshots invite us to imagine an alternate world “where who you love is immaterial” and “what’s important is that you love.”
Featured image - “Marshall and Me” © Matthew Finley
An Impossibly Normal Life • Matthew Finley
2024 PERSONAL AWARD
Downwinders • Sofie Hecht
2024 SOCIALLY ENGAGED AWARD
Sofie Hecht on Listening to the Voices of New Mexico’s Downwinders
For Downwind, her project on families within the 50-mile radius of the Trinity test site, Sofie Hecht has found ingenious ways to share the voices of local families, including 4th generation cancer survivors. She will discuss the interviews, portraits, family archives, and New Mexico residents’ stories that make up her project.
Featured image - “The walls remember, Family photographs hang on the wall in Andrea Carrillo’s mother’s home on Sierra Blanca Rd. in Tularosa, NM. Andrea and many of her friends and family grew up on Sierra Blanca Rd. and now have cancer that they attribute to the radiation exposure caused by the Trinity atomic bomb test. Andrea’s sister died of cancer a few years ago.” © Sofie Hecht
Hidden Histories of San Antonio • Robert Pluma
2024 MULTIMEDIA AWARD
Robert Pluma on a Multimedia Re-imagining of San Antonio’s Hidden Histories
Robert Pluma shares the mix of video, stills, oral histories and 3D scans in his project countering colonial accounts of the Coahuiltecan Indigenous people of San Antonio, and his plans to use augmented reality to allow people to participate in a forgotten past.
Featured image - “Coahuiltecans preparing for an overnight ceremony on the grounds of Mission San Juan Capistrano, San Antonio, Texas. The proceedings of the ceremony are secret and sacred, though I can share that songs and rituals were performed around a fire until dawn.” from the series Hidden Histories of San Antonio © Robert Pluma
Merging Dimensions • Anna Reed
2024 ME&EVE AWARD
Anna Reed on The Process of Dissecting Our High-Tech World
To examine our relationship to technology, Anna Reed uses high- and low-tech devices, hand-crafting assemblages on which she prints her provocative images and self-portraits. She will discuss the complex processes she undertakes to produce Merging Dimensions.
Featured image - “Phantasia” © Anna Reed
No Agua, No Vida: The Human Alteration of the Colorado River • John Trotter
2024 ENVIRONMENTAL AWARD
John Trotter on Sustaining a 20-Year Study of the Colorado River Crisis
John Trotter discusses his 23-year project, No Agua, No Vida, on the depletion of the Colorado River’s reservoirs. He traces the continuing impact of the Colorado River Compact, signed in Santa Fe, NM, in 1922, and examines local communities’ responses to the ongoing water crisis.
Featured image - “River as he goes looking for the leading edge of the slowly moving pulse flow of water from the Morelos Dam, a few kilometers upstream. Within a few hours, it would reach this spot, though in less than two months the riverbed would once again be dry.” © John Trotter
© Anna Reed