Meet the Team – New Orleans Photo Alliance

Leadership

Lisa leads the New Orleans Photo Alliance and annual PhotoNOLA Festival. She has seven years of experience in a leadership capacity building community partnerships, fundraising, programming and team-building. Her prior experience covers production of photography, exhibitions, and travel photography workshops. Partners include National Geographic, the Santa Fe Workshops and Nobechi Creative.

Amy James’s photographs can only be described as transcendent and natural. She prefers to shoot while illuminating her subjects using only natural light and environments. This practice helps her to capture the sitter as well as the viewer in her lens.

Amy James shoots primarily in black and white, the traditional way, using silver and film. She was trained as a painter but was drawn to the darkroom upon learning it could create as much of a challenge as the empty canvas. James studied at LSU under Michael Crespo and Robert Hausey with Thomas Neff, her photography professor, perhaps being her greatest influence and mentor. James exhibits in many venues throughout the South with permanent exhibits displayed in Ruston, Baton Rouge, Birmingham and Dallas.

Her writings and photography have been published regionally in magazines such as Louisiana Home & Garden, Country Roads, Delta Style, and nationally in Veranda and Ladies Home Journal, and internationally in SHOTS magazine

Camille Barnett

Director of Communications and Programs

Camille Barnett is a New Orleans-native creative. With a minor and journalism and over 6 years of professional experience as a photographer/photojournalist, she is accustomed to telling stories and telling them with care. When not telling stories through camera or pen, she serves as coordinator and project manger in the production world as well as for local nonprofits.

Sophie Clay

Director of Operations

Sophia Clay is a photographer from the Mississippi Delta, living in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her work centers around the temporality of the man made within the natural, often focusing on how the natural world reclaims a space. She finds a particular beauty in ordinary or mundane objects. Clay is represented by Southside Gallery in Oxford, Mississippi.

This could be you

NOPA Leadership

Board of Directors

Bruce “Sunpie” Barnes

Board President

Bruce Sunpie Barnes is a New Orleans musician, former park ranger with the National Park Service, actor, photographer, book author, former high school biology teacher, former college football All-American, and former NFL player (Kansas City Chiefs). Sunpie Barnes’ many careers have taken him far and wide. He has traveled to over 53 countries playing his own style of what he calls Afro-Louisiana music incorporating blues, zydeco, gospel, Caribbean and African influenced rhythms and melodies. He is a multi-instrumentalist, mastering accordion, harmonica, and piano along with rubboard, talking drum, and dejembe. He learned accordion from some of the best Zydeco pioneers in Louisiana, including Fernest Arceneaux, John Delafose, and Clayton Sampy. Along with his musical group Sunpie and the Louisiana Sunspots, he has performed at festivals and concerts across the US and around the globe. He has collaborated with music gurus such as Harold Brown (WAR), Willie Dixon (Father of Chicago Blues),and Trey Anastasio (Phish). Sunpie has recorded 7 critically acclaimed CDs with his compositions currently featured in 16 Hollywood film productions. In addition to this musical work he is also a former member of the Paul Simon Band that embarked on a 58 city world tour “Paul Simon and Sting Together”, which span 47 countries (2014,15 and 16). In 2018 Latin Super Star Carlos Vives invited Sunpie along with the Louisiana Sunspots perform with him at the 51st annual Vallenato Festival in Valledupar, Coloumbia. Film acting has also been a important part of his busy career. Sunpie’s work has appeared in such Hollywood productions as Point of No Return, Deja Vu, Under Cover Blues, Jonah Hex, Treme,The Big Easy, Skeleton Key, Heartless, The Gates Of Silence Odd Girl Out, The African Americans, Sesame Street, NCIS New Orleans, Queen Sugar and Mayfair Witches. He is deeply involved in New Orleans parade culture and co-authored the 2015 critically acclaimed book “Talk That Music Talk” – Passing On Brass Band Music In New Orleans “The Traditional Way”. Over 300 of Sunpie’s photographs are featured in this book. Le Kèr Creole is his latest book that also has a 15 song disc of music composted in Louisiana Creole. He is the Big Chief of the Northside Skull and Bone Gang, one of the oldest existing Black Carnival groups in New Orleans. Sunpie is also a member of the Black Men of Labor Social Aid and Pleasure Club

Tamer Acikalin

Treasurer

Tamer Acikalin, (Antalya, Turkiye), M.D.(Ankara Tip Fakultesi 1970), Gastroenterology (Tulane Medical School, 1980), MBA (UNO 2000), Languages; Turkish (Turkiye & Azerbeijan), English, Spanish

Student of Political Science and Ethnic Politics. Multiple medical and social service awards. Physicians Recognition Awards 1977-80-83-86, Distinguished Service Award 1981-82 Kiwanis, Algiers, Distinguished Service Award 2000,

Assembly of Turkish American Associations, (ATAA) (President 1996-98, Chairman, Board of Trustees Dec 2004-2009), ATAA is a national organization representing the Turkish-American Community. ATAA regularly communicates with the U.S. and Turkish government officials via in person consultations, conferences, cogressional testimonies, and lead country delegation visits.

“Young Audiences, New Orleans Chapter, Board member, 2004-2016, 2018-24, Lyrica Baroque, Member of BOD (Jan 2019, Treasurer) Jan. 2020-Dec 2023, Member, Program

Member, World Affairs Council of New Orleans, 2007-2024, Member Board of Directors, 2017-2024.”

Practitioner of Gastroenterology & Internal Medicine (1980-2022),

EMRE KARAOĞLU

Vice President

Emre Karaoglu, a contemporary figurative artist from Turkiye now based in New Orleans, uses oil, pastel, charcoal, and photography to capture the profound layers of human experience in everyday life.

‘Emotion, connection, and culture are infused within my paintings. I meticulously focus on silhouettes and the changing states of the human experience. I am an observer and an archivist of modern-day culture. The body of artworks that I am creating is “up close and personal.” They are intimate moments with people around me and strangers in physical proximity. I am a witness to other people’s lives.’

Emre’s painting was selected for the Royal Society of Portrait Painters Annual Exhibition 2024, at the Mall Galleries, London, UK. Three of Emre’s artworks are in the permanent ‘How You Doin’, New Orleans?’ & “Art of the Black Experience” collection of the City of New Orleans. His artworks were selected as a part of “the State of the Art: Record Zine Project” at the LSU Museum of Art, Shaw Center for the Arts in Baton Rouge in 2022.

Emre’s artworks were selected as a part of “Refreshing America” International Art Show at the Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans, 2025. Emre’s paintings were selected for the 16th and 17th Annual Louisiana Fine Arts Showcase at the President’s residence at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond in 2023 and 2024. Emre’s artworks were selected for the New Orleans Art Association (NOAA) 2023 and 2024 National Show and received the Merit Award.

Recent solo shows include “The Rhythm of Streets” at Sullivan Gallery, New Orleans, 2025, “Witness”, Second Story Gallery, New Orleans Healing Center, 2024, and “Faces Around Us”, 2023, Sullivan Gallery, New Orleans. He belongs to the artist collective, “Renegade” and “Second Story Gallery,” in New Orleans. Since Emre immigrated to New Orleans, he has curated shows at The Front Gallery, Gallery Huracan, Second Story Gallery, and New Orleans Photo Alliance.

Emre has participated in group exhibitions at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Ashé Cultural Arts Center, the LSU Museum of Art, the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts, Southeastern Louisiana University, Gryder Gallery, LeMieux Galleries, Gallery Huracan, and Shreveport Artspace.

In Turkey, Emre’s artworks have been selected for World Art Day with UNESCO, the Exhibition for Turkish National Anthem CKSM, Turkish Republic Day at Akdeniz University, and International Women’s Day Dokumapark MSG.

Leslie Tabony

Secretary

A self-taught digital photographer based in New Orleans, LA, leslie Tabony, is an artist using her own associations as she creates narratives which focus on the sublime and the ethereal.

The relationship of longing, sensuality and spirituality are often explored in her love of the portraiture of women.

Her work uses unusual light, diffusion, soft focus, a pictorial aesthetic and compositions to find the beauty in paring a visceral emotion amidst paradoxical extremes.

Infinitude, vulnerability, submission, reverence, sexuality, stillness, and quietude are weaved together — So too are poetry, philosophy, eras of times gone by — 18th, 19th and early 20th century.

Her work is mostly black and white, but sepia, duotones and even colour are used depending on the Body of Work.

Eli Mergel

Board Member

Eli has gained a large portfolio in event, street, and architectural photography over the years. With a career in Information Technology and a past life within the Marines, Eli has the advantage of being on the cutting-edge while also being down-to-earth. When he is not in NYC shooting candid street, he can be found in New Orleans shooting street events and local culture.

Ed Abraham

Board Member

Natalie Cooney

Board Member

Gallery Staff

Raymond Goscrand

Gallery Staff

Photographer based in New Orleans, with ties in Houston

Colin Poellot

Gallery Staff

This could be you

Gallery Staff

PhotoNOLA Committee

Nicolas Boulier

PhotoNOLA

Nicolas BOULIER founded the only gallery dedicated exclusively to contemporary photography in the Deep South. It was a no-brainer for him when he decided to renovate a historic building in New Orleans’ arts district. Throughout his many professional lives, he used the still images. To encourage, influence, raise awareness, interest, sell, seduce, attract or even move. The double exposure school recalls him the capital of surrealism, the City of Magritte, BRUSSELS, where he worked for 3 years. He would have dreamed of using double exposure to reinforce his efforts propagandist … or on the contrary escape!

Richard McCabe

PhotoNOLA

Richard McCabe is a curator, photographer and writer based in New Orleans. He was born in England and grew up in the American South. In 1998, he received an MFA in Studio Art from Florida State University. Since 2010, he has been the Curator of Photography at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. He has organized and curated over thirty exhibitions including: Seeing Beyond the Ordinary, The Mythology of Florida, The Rising, Eudora Welty: Photographs from the 1930s – 40s, The Colourful South, Self-Processing: Instant Photography, Memory is a Strange Bell: The Art of William Christenberry and New Southern Photography.

Richard McCabe’s photographs have been included in gallery and museum exhibitions throughout the United States including: Size Matters, Mobile Museum of Art, Mobile, Alabama, Instant Joy, AM Richard Fine Art Gallery, Brooklyn, New York, and Once Around The Sun, Boyd/Satellite Gallery, New Orleans, Louisiana. In 2017, AINT – BAD press published LAND STAR, a monograph of McCabe’s photography. McCabe’s thoughts and writings on photography have been published in the New York Times, Time, National Public Radio(NPR),Louisiana Cultural Vistas, Spot, The Bitter Southerner, AINT – BAD, Hotshoe, Huck and LENSCRATCH magazine. In 2018, he contributed the introduction essay –The Reality on the Ground for the University of New Orleans press publication: New Southern Photography: Images of the Twenty-first Century South.