Staff
Matthew Contos – Curator of Public Engagement
Matthew Contos has served as an Artist, Curator, and Educator throughout his career. His efforts have resulted in the formation of social centers, international collaborations, exhibitions, publications, and diverse community-based programming. Contos has held positions within various institutions such as CENTER (Santa Fe), SITE Santa Fe Contemporary Art Museum, The Center of Contemporary Arts (Santa Fe), Creative Capital, and the San Francisco Public Arts Commission Civic Design Review Committee. Contos’ practice generates transdisciplinary platforms that foster collaboration, social engagement, and collective action.
Contos holds an MFA in Social Practice from California College of the Arts and a BFA in Studio Art from the University of Denver. At the Hellenic International Studies in the Arts program, he studied in Greece, accredited by the Massachusetts College of the Arts. Contos received early childhood education certifications through the University of Montana, Bozeman, MT. And Certified training as a GED preparatory educator and Drug and Alcohol Counseling through the Addiction Research and Treatment Services clinical program of the Division of Substance Dependence, Department of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado, School of Medicine. He provides consulting services for arts non-profits, artists, project coordinators, and community-based initiatives. He now resides in a rural town near Antwerp, Belgium.
JC González – Communications Manager
JC is an artist and freelance writer who has written for various independent art publications internationally. He earned a self-designed BA at the College of Santa Fe in 2011. He is currently based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
© Peter Ogilvie
Whitney Wernick – Social Media Manager
Whitney Erin Wernick (b. 1995) received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photographic and Studio Art practices from Santa Fe University of Art and Design in 2018. As an artist, Wernick shares the connection she has with her body, nature, and today’s world using an unforgiving and in-your-face creative technique. Wernick’s focus includes self-portraits, the natural world, fashion, and abstract nude photography while highlighting the world’s controversial, social and environmental issues. In collaborating with her subjects – herself, nature, and others – she utilizes each experience to uncover the softness and rarity that can lie within connection, self-love, vitality, and the human psyche. Inspired by Baroque, Impressionist, Surrealist, and Contemporary artists and poets, Wernick evolves her identity through various mediums every day.
© Gabriella Marks
Laura Wzorek Pressley – Executive Director
Laura Wzorek Pressley is a Certified Executive Director who has been at the helm of CENTER in Santa Fe for 12 years. She directs one of the most effective outcome-driven programs for photographers in the world, CENTER’s annual juried photographic portfolio review event, the Review Santa Fe Photo Festival. In addition to high-impact, outcome-driven programs, CENTER fosters an esteemed network of professionals that includes book publishers, curators, editors, gallerists, and many of today’s leading thinkers in imaging.
Laura has curated or produced exhibitions, including The Dispossessed (2016), The Frontier (2016), Art & Oppression (2017), Conjured Futures (2018), co-curated the Korea International Photo Festival, and works collaboratively with partner venues for local and international festivals. A contributor to photography festivals around the globe including the Rencontres d’ Arles (France), Cortona on the Move (Italy), and Mt. Rokko International Photography Festival (Japan), she interprets and presents on contemporary lens-based practice as a portfolio reviewer, serves on judging panels, and is a nominator for photographic awards.
Board of Directors
Evan Anderman, Ph.D. – Board President & Photographer – evananderman.com
Evan Anderman (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 wide-spread 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 Colorado School of Mines.
He has served on numerous non-profit boards and as an alumnus of Review Santa Fe is currently the President of the Board of CENTER in Santa Fe, NM.
Reid Callanan – Director, Santa Fe Photographic Workshops – reidcallanan.com
Reid Callanan is the Founder and Director of the Santa Fe Workshops, currently in its 31st year offering photography and writing workshops to the international imaging community. In addition to workshops in Santa Fe, New Mexico, there are also educational programs in Havana, Cuba, and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. In 1994 Reid founded the non-profit Santa Fe Center for Photography, now known as CENTER, and is currently Vice-President of its Board of Directors. He serves on the President’s Council for Texas Photographic Society, on the Board for American Society of Media Photographers Foundation, and on the Advisory Board for Bertha Crosley Ball Center for Compassion.
Reid started photographing in 1974 during a semester abroad at Richmond College in London and has been making images ever since using a variety of photographic processes including silver halide, Polaroid imagery, and now digital capture. His photographic projects include a personal diary of images called HOMESCAPES, black-and-white portraits made in Cuba and Mexico, and most recently, iPhone travel images posted to Instagram.
Stuart Cohen – Photographer & Author
Stuart Cohen is a graduate of Yale and trained in photography at the New England School of Photography in Boston. His commercial photography career from 1972 to the early 2000s covered a wide variety of assignments, primarily on location domestically and overseas. He was active in stock photography during its heyday when he was represented by major stock agencies in Boston and New York. His images are in the collection of the Smithsonian and other museums. His website ParisBW.com displays a series of black and white images that illustrate his long love affair with Paris.
Stuart has written 3 consumer books and numerous articles about the profession of photography for the trade press, especially on subjects concerning future trends and professional ethics. More recently, since giving up shooting commercial assignments, he has served as the head of a symphony orchestra, president of a synagogue and on several non-profit boards and committees. He is the father of two grown daughters, Elizabeth and Caroline, and lives in Santa Fe.
Peter Ogilvie – Photographer – ogilviephoto.com
Raised in southern California, Peter Ogilvie studied Art and Architecture at the University of California at Berkeley. After graduation, he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts where he turned to documentary films as his means of expression. Filmmaking lead to still photography, both fine art, and commercial.
Pursuing his career in advertising, fashion, and fine art photography he has lived in San Francisco, Milan, Paris, New York, and now New Mexico. He has traveled the world on assignments and has won numerous advertising and graphic awards for his work. The journey continues. His passion endures. He still loves creating and looking at images. Ogilvie currently serves on the Board at CENTER, ASMP-NM, and APA NY with the goal of helping the next generation find possibilities.
© Eve Caughey
Dr. Kymberly Pinder – Scholar, Curator & Acting President of Academic Affairs, Massachusetts College of Art & Design
Dr. Kymberly Pinder is a Scholar, Curator and is currently the Acting President of Academic Affairs at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She was a professor and administrator for sixteen years at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before coming to New Mexico where she was dean of the College of Fine Arts at UNM from 2012 until 2019. As a community arts scholar, Dr. Pinder has been committed to community engagement and interdisciplinary initiatives. Her efforts at the UNM Art Museum at UNM resulted in an annual “all-arts day” titled ArtUnexpected, and as interim museum director, she began the multi-city initiative, PhotoSummer to promote the programming around photography and curated the exhibition across NM.
Before and during her teaching career she worked in the education and curatorial departments in museums and galleries, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters in New York, and The Art Institute of Chicago. Dr. Pinder has been published in the Art Journal, Art Bulletin, and Third Text. She has received awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the humanities and the Mellon, Ford, and Henry Luce Foundations, among others.
Susanna Space – Writer & Co-Owner, Big Swing
Susanna Space is a writer of essays, memoirs, and flash nonfiction. Her work has appeared at The Rumpus, Longreads, and Hobart, as well as in journals including Pleiades, Third Coast, and The Cincinnati Review. In 2019 she received support from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, which provides grants to feminist women in the arts.
Dyanna Taylor – Cinematographer – grabahunkoflightning.com
Dyanna Taylor is an Emmy Award-winning Director, Cinematographer, and Director of Photography whose prominent career in documentaries and features has also earned her a shared Peabody Award and the honored Muse Lifetime Achievement Award for Outstanding Vision and Achievement in Cinematography from New York Women in Film and Television. She has traveled the world lensing and directing films, documentaries, and television specials on social issues and environmental/wildlife concerns with extensive credits including work for all of the major US network and cable media organizations: HBO, PBS, ABC, CBS, National Geographic, and recently as CHINA Scenic Unit Director for the Disney film “MULAN.”
As Director/Director of Photography, Dyanna produced Dorothea Lange: Grab A Hunk of Lightning (for which she received an NEH Production Grant) which aired on American PBS and TV in Ontario, Canada, and Europe. Dyanna is Lange’s granddaughter and has been deeply influenced by her grandmother’s sensibility and esthetic. Dyanna guest lectures and teaches at museums, universities, and film events, on subjects covering filmmaking, cinematography, women in film, and screenings of her films. Book her through the grabahunkoflightning.com website.
Will Wilson – Photographer & Program Head of Photography, Santa Fe Community College – willwilson.photoshelter.com
William (Will) Wilson is a Diné photographer who spent his formative years living in the Navajo Nation. Born in San Francisco in 1969, Wilson studied photography at the University of New Mexico (Dissertation Tracked MFA in Photography, 2002) and Oberlin College (BA, Studio Art and Art History, 1993). In 2007, Wilson won the Native American Fine Art Fellowship from the Eiteljorg Museum, and in 2010 was awarded a prestigious grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Wilson has held visiting professorships at the Institute of American Indian Arts (1999-2000), Oberlin College (2000-01), and the University of Arizona (2006-08).
Board Member Emeriti
