CENTER’s Mission

Founded in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1994, the 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization CENTER supports socially and environmentally engaged lens-based projects through education, public platforms, funding, and partnerships. CENTER EIN • 85-0428041

Through our advancement of artists and their work, CENTER serves to deepen public understanding of lens-based media’s complex history and ongoing cultural significance. By establishing partnerships between artists and justice-driven communities, historians, cultural critics, students, and the art world, we advance projects that respect all people, open minds, and engage our shared humanity.

Characterized by a community of gifted and committed photographers, CENTER has proven for the last 30 years that it can help photographers and lens-based artists grow into their full potential. CENTER programs foster insights and actualizations that ripple and impact all involved by providing platforms where the creative impulse can be engaged and challenged. Public exhibitions, educational presentations, and expositions of the work are held in conjunction with the awards, grants, and Review Santa Fe. These programs are open for submission to international and national photographers and lens-based artists during our annual Calls for Entry. Annual programs include the Project Launch Grant, Project Development Grant, Me&Eve Award, The CENTER Awards, Excellence in Multimedia Award, Callanan Excellence in Teaching Award, Jay and Susie Tyrrell Excellence in Works by Hand Award, Blue Earth Fiscal Sponsorship, The Democratic Lens: Photography and Civic Engagement lecture series, and the Review Santa Fe Photo Symposium.

Santa Fe, New Mexico, is located in the ancestral and unceded traditional territories of the Tewa people, who continue to maintain connections to this land. Thousands of years ago, O’ghe P’oghe – the original Tewa name for Santa Fe, which means White Shell, Water Place – was a center place for Northern and Southern Tewa communities. We honor the Tewa people of the past, present, and future who inhabited, held sacred, and stewarded this land.