Contributors

Tory Foster has been developing high profile content for over ten years for clients that include CAA, Anonymous Content, Lionsgate, Warner Music Group, Fremantle Media, Major League Baseball, Ford Motor Company, RSA, and many others. After directing and producing short films at U.S.C. that played at festivals around the country, Foster got her start in the literary department at CAA on the team that represented Oscar-winner Eric Roth, the Phillip K. Dick Estate and cult writer Neil Gaiman. She assisted in the packaging of the films Horrible Bosses and Stardust. Her passion for writing and early stage media project development led her to her job as an in-house creative at the powerhouse commercial production company, MJZ, where she served as a Director of Development, working closely with filmmaker Marcus Nispel who rebooted the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise with Michael Bay. As an executive, she consulted on many successful films that include Priest, Pathfinder, The Ruins, Case 39, Blood Father, and Die Hard IV, and she edited the story for the Dark Horse graphic novel Pathfinder. She then teamed up with director Kevin Donovan (The Tuxedo) and Lionsgate Co-Chair Michael Burns, to package the Sundance indie comedy Shrink with Robin Williams and Kevin Spacey. With Donovan, she consulted on commercials and produced PSAs for Wild Aid starring Harrison Ford and Jackie Chan, in an award-winning campaign that is helping stop the sale of endangered animal products in Asia. In recent years she has expanded her work into digital media, serving as founding editor of Aleim.com and managing social media growth for private clients. She is a managing partner at the creative services company Underground Jam Media, which maintains an outstanding track record of helping directors and producers win lucrative career-making commercial jobs. Foster has an M.F.A. with dual concentrations in Directing and Film Business from the U.S.C. School of Cinema-Television and B.A. from Stanford University.

Aeric Meredith-Goujon is best known for his erotic portraiture, but in a broader sense, his work revolves around the human body in states of extreme activity. Raised in Southern Indiana, Aeric came to New York City to continue his education and he earned his MFA in photography from Pratt Institute in 1999. Animated by spiritual inquiry and influenced by abstract painting and the visual distortions of intimacy, Aeric’s work captures the raw feelings of his subjects, focusing on the amorphous relationship between the intangible and the material. Aeric currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two children where he also works as the visual director and composer with the modern dance company ChristinaNoel and the Creature. Aeric’s work has been exhibited and published over the past two decades, shedding light on the beauty of the most intimate recesses of the human character and experience.

Alessandra Petlin was born in Paris, France and grew up in the art and world of New York City. She is the daughter of the late artist Irving Petlin. Alessandra graduated from Art Center in December of 2002, where she studied art and photography. Returning to New York from California she was quickly named one of PDN’s 30 photographers to watch and short succession one of her images became the cover of American Photography’s Photo Annual. Alessandra got her start in editorial photography with her distinct narrative portraits, shooting many covers and social political feature stories for the New York Times Magazine. She went on to shoot for numerous publications, including New York Magazine, Time, Newsweek, GQ, ESPN, Vogue, Entertainment Weekly, Glamour, Marie Claire, Fortune and The Smithsonian Magazine. She is recognized for her expressive use of color and lighting, creating lush cinematic images.

Contributing editor for Santa Barbara Magazine and LALA Magazine writer Amelia Fleetwood lives in the mountains of Ojai, California with her children. She keeps a small farm of goats, chickens, horses and a pair of badly behaved overly energetic dogs. Amelia Fleetwood has been published or has forthcoming pieces in Architectural Digest, At Large Magazine, Domino, C Magazine, C Home, Santa Barbara Magazine, Malibu 90265, 805 Living, The Fine Line, The Local, So it Goes Magazine, Sunday Express Magazine, Ventana Magazine, Huffington Post, Du Jour and elsewhere.

Bart Koetsier is a Dutch portrait and documentary photographer based in Paris. People are key in Koetsier's photographs: portraits as well as documentary images. However, he also looks for places and objects to tell his story. In all images, he creates a strong cinematic atmosphere. The use of light is decisive here; events become scenes, people become characters and the locations become their scenery.

During many years Koetsier has been working on his series ‘Taillights Fade’ ; a personal document on Europe at the beginning of the 21st Century. “Bart Koetsier follows the tradition of night street photographers in his series Taillights Fade. Walking the dark hours of cities in Europe, the work-in-progress series so far includes Amsterdam, Paris, Brussels, Marseille and Warsaw. While many street photographers rely on anonymity and distance, Koetsier says he enjoys the night-time interactions and even, in a way, uses photography as an enabler for the experiences. Capturing the blurry, bizarre, and occasionally confrontational nature of night life, the photos are a mixture of colour and black and white, yet maintain a consistent unsettling atmosphere.” - GUP Magazine

Bart Koetsier exhibited sections of ‘Taillights Fade’ in 2017 during the annual Dutch book fair with Koos Breukel and in 2016 at Paris Photo both at the Atelier Néerlandais in Paris. In between 2014 and 2018 ‘Taillights Fade’ was nominated for the Magnum Emerging Photography Fund and published by The Guardian, De Volkskrant, Burn Magazine, GUP Magazine, New damn Paper and VICE. Based in Paris Koetsier works for Le Monde, De Volkskrant, Het Parool, NGO’s such as Medecins du Monde and Premiere Urgence Internationale and The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Bart Koetsier is represented by Hollandse Hoogte and Hans Lucas.

Brian Strong is the Senior Vice President of Brand Communications at FOX Sports, leading brand storytelling strategy connected to the company’s key sports and entertainment moments, digital platforms, marketing campaigns and special projects. Previously at Nike, Strong held the role of Communications Director on both the Global Corporate and North America category communications teams. With the global team, he drove storytelling for the company’s corporate/brand narrative. In North America, he led the strategic media relations work for the Basketball, Soccer, Football and Training categories. Prior to that, Brian led an independent communications consultancy, The Strong Group and also worked for renowned NYC agencies HL Group and Dan Klores Communications, after an early career role at CBS Sports. He’s also an alumnus of the University of North Carolina and its Morehead-Cain Scholarship program, which he now serves as a volunteer, assisting current scholars and co-chairing the foundation’s triennial alumni forum.

Carla Williams is a writer, editor, and photographer born and raised in Los Angeles, California. She received her MFA from the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque and her BA from Princeton University and is the author of numerous essays and articles about photography and co-author of two histories of photography, including The Black Female Body: A Photographic History with Deborah Willis. Her photographic work has been widely published and exhibited. Williams currently resides in New Orleans, Louisiana and is the owner of Material Life shop February Gallery, which specializes in photography.

Nic Brierre Aziz is a writer, curator and performance artist based in New Orleans, LA. As a native New Orleanian who has had the opportunity to travel extensively across the world, he is very passionate about the impact that traveling and written expression could have on the city’s youth. After returning to New Orleans, these passions led him to found WriteBrained – a youth development program that utilizes the power of writing and unique cultural experiences as catalysts for self-discovery. During this period, Nic also began managing the Haitian Cultural Legacy Collection. This is a collection of over 400 pieces of Haitian artwork that was started by his maternal grandfather in 1944. As a native New Orleanian artist, Nic has been able to work in numerous capacities with many of the city’s top art organizations including The Joan Mitchell Center, the Arts Council of New Orleans, Paper Monuments and Prospect.4. Currently, Nic is cultivating his community focused art practice as the Director of Programs for New Orleans based multi-arts organization Antenna and as the manager of the New Orleans Museum of Art’s mobile museum and community engagement initiative known as “NOMA+”. Nic is also a Salzburg Global Fellow and a former 4.0 Schools Tiny Fellow. As a writer, he has contributed to publications such as HuffPost, Pelican Bomb and ESPN.com. As an artist and curator, his work has been featured by publications such as Hyperallergic, The Oxford American, The 74, The Alternative UK and Artforum.

Rania Matar was born and raised in Lebanon and moved to the U.S. in 1984. As a Lebanese-born American woman and mother, her cross-cultural experience and personal narrative inform her photography.
Matar’s work has been widely published and exhibited in museums worldwide, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Carnegie Museum of Art and more. It is part of the permanent collections of several museums, institutions and private collections. A mid-career retrospective of her work was recently on view at the Cleveland Museum of Art, and at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, in a solo exhibition: In Her Image: Photographs by Rania Matar.
She has received several grants and awards including a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship, 2017 Mellon Foundation artist-in-residency grant at the Gund Gallery at Kenyon College, 2011 Legacy Award at the Griffin Museum of Photography, 2011 and 2007 Massachusetts Cultural Council artist fellowships. In 2008 she was a finalist for the Foster Award at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, with an accompanying solo exhibition.

Ryan Jackson-Healy holds a BA from the University of Southern California and an MFA from the American Film Institute. He works as a director, cinematographer, and writer in art, fashion, advertising, film and television. He currently lives in Los Angeles.

Sara Harris is an audio artist and radio journalist with more than a decade of experience reporting from Los Angeles and Mexico. Her work focuses on immigrant communities, urban geography, and environmental justice. Sara’s radio stories have been featured on Marketplace, All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Studio 360, The Next Big Thing, Living on Earth, BBC’s The World, and Mexico’s IMER national network. Sara Harris started the Los Angeles Bureau at Youth Radio and founded the AudioPostales cross-border radio project with youth in the U.S. and Mexico. Sara has a master’s in Specialized Journalism from USC’s Annenberg School for Communication.

Stacey is an independent curator and writer based in New York City. Stacey recently published her co-authored book on artist collections, Artists Living with Art. She was previously the Director of SmartSpaces, a non-profit organization that installed contemporary art in vacant urban spaces as well as the Curatorial Director for The Station, an independent group exhibition which took place in Miami during Art Basel 2008. Prior to this, she worked in the curatorial department at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Stacey has published essays in gallery and museum catalogues, and her writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The Sunday Times, Hamptons, Gotham, Art Basel Miami Beach Magazine, Garage and other publications. Stacey serves on the board of directors at The Drawing Center and the Princeton University Art Museum. She is a member of the Artemis Council at The New Museum of Contemporary Art and the Curatorial Committee of Madison Square Park Art. Stacey received a B.A. cum laude from Princeton University, an M.B.A at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management and an M.A. from the Christies Education Program. She lives in SoHo with her husband and three children. Photo: copyright Timothy Greenfield-Sanders.

Stefan Ruiz is based in Brooklyn, NY. He has taught art at San Quentin State Prison in California. He was the creative director for COLORS magazine. His work has appeared in magazines, including the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker , Financial Times Magazine, Vogue and Rolling Stone. In 2016, his work appeared in the exhibition, “Public, Private, Secret” curated by Charlotte Cotton, the in augural show at the ICP museum in New York. His photographs have been exhibited at the Photographers’ Gallery, Les Rencontres d’Arles PhotoEspaña, New York Photo Festival, Havana Biennial and the Contact Photography Festival in Toronto. He has published four monographs including “The Factory of Dreams”, a book on Mexican Soap Operas, published by Apeture and “Mexican Crime Photographs” published by GOST Books in 2016. His upcoming book on Cholombianos will be published by Aperture.

Therese Öhrvall lives and works in New York City. A native Swede growing up in Colombia and Spain, Therese started photographing from a young age inspired by her mother, also a photographer. Öhrvall’s clients include TIME Magazine, W Magazine, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Times, Wired, Refinery29, amongst others. Öhrvall’s work resides between portraiture and fashion, many times combining Swedish cinematographic references with American popular culture and symbolisms.

Born in Atlanta, GA, Tierney Gearon is an acclaimed Malibu based contemporary photographer, who has gained both critical and commercial recognition for her powerful and intense colorful photographs. praise for her powerful and haunting images did not come to art through traditional means. Her life goal was always to be a mother. After being a model and commercial photographer for years, her marriage dissolved. She then turned her camera on her family. Through those images she acquired on different family trips around the world she was discovered by Charles Saatchi. She was thrust into the spot light in 2001 when her work was featured as one of the main photographers in the famed “I Am A Camera” exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London. Her work became an overnight sensation when images of he children came under public scrutiny. Since her controversial debut, Gearon has been pushing the envelope of contemporaryphotography. “The Mother Project” and “Daddy, Where are you” both give the viewer an intimate look into Tierney’s relationship with her mentally ill mother, not only capturing the raw intensity but also celebrates her free spirit. In 2009, Gearon pushed her photography to a new zenith, double exposing film inside of the camera to produce groundbreaking chance narratives in her work titled “EXPLOSURE”. Tierney has been exhibited at many prominent galleries and museums including, Gagosian Gallery, Yossi Milo, Ace Gallery, The Parrish Art Museum, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, and Phillips de Pury & company in London. Her most recent project, a 24 page feature of 13 Oscar Award winning woman titled “Hollywood Heroines”, was featured in the New York Times magazine. She will be previewing a new collection of works titled “Shape Color” at Paris Photo Los Angeles Photography Art fair at the end of April 2013. Damiani have published a book of Tierney Gearon’s children’s photography titled ”The Alphabet Book”.

Texan native, Tom Pogue, (31) who currently resides in Paris, has two published works out titled Pocket Change Mesquite. Before Paris he spent the latter part of his twenties living on his sailboat in Marina Del Rey, CA where he spent most of his time like he always has, reading, writing, and taking naps. Look for his upcoming work in a series of books aptly named, Levi Tumbleweed.