NEW ORLEANS PHOTO ALLIANCE 2018 COLLECTOR’S CLUB
Warren Thompson discovered photography by accident during his senior year in college. While working in a lab with a darkroom, a professor took interest in his curiosity and showed him how to make prints; Warren has been enjoying photography ever since that day. After a few years he decided to teach photography and attended Rochester Institute of Technology for some introductory classes. Warren then returned to Florida State University to complete a MFA degree. He prefers street photography and documenting the landscape and people that surround him. Warren is always ready for a “road trip” and his favorite advice is “shoot more”. He taught in and developed the photography program at Pensacola State College. In 2008 Warren retired from teaching but he remains active in shooting, exhibiting and bookmaking.
Nell Dickerson is a Hollywood art director and set designer, fine-art photographer, and preservation architect. The series, DIMBERS, continues the themes of her successful photography books about historic and cultural preservation of the Deep South: “GONE: A Photographic Plea for Preservation,” BelleBooks, 2011; and “PORCH DOGS,” John F. Blair Publisher, 2013. Amazon sales ranked “GONE” as #1 in both photography and architecture books, and “PORCH DOGS” as #1 in both photography and animal books. “PORCH DOGS” won both the Benjamin Franklin and Gold Medal awards from the Independent Book Publishers Association, as well as a bronze medal from the Independent Publisher Book Awards.
Frank Hamrick is an associate professor at Louisiana Tech University. His work mixes photography, storytelling, handmade books and found objects. Frank received his BFA from The University of Georgia and his MFA from New Mexico State University. NPR has written about Frank’s handmade books and Oxford American Magazine named Frank as one of the 100 Superstars of Southern Art. His work is housed in collections including the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth and The Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans.
Aaron Shipper has had an avid interest in taking and collecting photographs for more than 40 years. His latest project is a collection of vernacular “snapshot” photos which can be seen at www.artofthesnapshot.com. Aaron lives in New Orleans, sharing his home with his vintage camera collection.
Elizabeth Kleinveld is an artist and photographer who divides her time between Amsterdam and New Orleans. For her, art is about creative self-expression and storytelling; it is about responding to what she observes in the world. While some of her work is about striving to express the beauty she sees, other work focuses on themes she finds politically important. Often she uses art to transform her reality as she did in 2007, while working to come to terms with the raw reality of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Kleinveld later found inspiration from exotic flowers and their reflection in water, resulting in the images of her series Flower Reflections that have an almost dreamlike and painterly quality.
Epaul Julien is an artist from New Orleans who began his career as a photographer in 1995 when a near death experience changed his life. Creating art for him is a necessity, vitally linked to his existence. His artistic practice has also been shaped by the extremity of his circumstances. When the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina forced him to abandon his darkroom and bulky photographic equipment, he emerged with a new approach; six months of exile pushed him to use the images he had salvaged and to create a new form of mixed media.
Donna Pinckley, a native of Louisiana, received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography from Louisiana Tech University and a Master of Fine Arts in photography from University of Texas at Austin. She has received Visual Artist Fellowships from the Mid-America Arts Alliance/NEA and the Arkansas Arts Council. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in over 200 solo/juried shows and also included in several public collections, such as the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, Louisiana, the University of Vera Cruz at Xalapa, Vera Cruz, Mexico, and the Photographic Collection at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin. In 2014, she won Honorable Mention in the Black and White Spider Awards and in 2013, she won third place at The International Photography Awards (IPA). In 2011, she won the Gold, Silver, and Honorable Mention at the PX3 Prix De La Photographie in Paris, France. She has also won Honorable Mention at the Lens Culture International Exposure Awards. She has been published in GEO Germany, The Photo Review magazine, Black and White, Photography Quarterly and the online photography publications, www.lensculture.com and www.oneonethousand.org. She is currently Associate Professor at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, Arkansas.
Ryuten Paul Rosenblum Roshi began Zen practice with his first teacher, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center in 1968. For ten years, Ryuten lived and trained at Zen Center: with Suzuki Roshi until his death in 1971, and subsequently with Suzuki Roshi’s successor and the Second Abbot of Zen Center, Zentatsu Baker Roshi. Ryuten received lay initiation from Suzuki Roshi in 1970 and priest ordination from Baker Roshi in January of 1975. Ryuten is a teacher in the Dharma Sangha in both the U.S. and Europe. He spends nearly half of each year as the Seido, Resident Teacher, at Buddhistisches Studienzentrum Johanneshof located in the Black Forest in Germany. Ryuten also teaches at other centers throughout Germany, Austria and The Netherlands. He lives in San Anselmo, California. The significance of the visual arts in his life has been developed and refined by decades of Zen practice and temple life. This practice life is rooted in and expressed through qualities such as spaciousness, impermanence, stillness, clarity, intimacy, incompleteness, simplicity and the absence of pretension … a grounding in the mysterious uniqueness of each arising in the present moment.