Invited Artists
In 2023, 56 photographers were selected to participate in the 2023 competition - congratulations to each of them. Please see below for a quick bio of each juried artist.
The main paradigm in Norman Aragones’ photographic art revolves around the concept of depth—having some level of meaning within the photo and thus attempting to elicit a viewer's reaction through deliberate imagery. Norman’s hope is that the viewer comes away with some feeling, idea, and/or perspective from seeing his photos. The techniques he uses in creating photographic images are not something specific. He just tries to work diligently in creating something particular that he had envisioned previously in his mind's eye.

Jan Bell’s work reveals an intimate view of the natural world, reaching into the subtle beauty within a form. Each photo represents an opportunity to consider the subject, almost apart from its meaning or function. Whether it be the inner folds of a plant, a sand-swept dune, or a distant coastline, Jan’s unique vision is rooted in his love of nature and the photographic process.

After spending 35 years producing and directing documentary films for public television and educational distribution, Claude Beller focused his creative talents on photography. His work has been exhibited in galleries throughout the United States and was recently chosen as one of 10 photographers to win the “Feature Shoot” International Street Photography Award.

Photography has become a serious pursuit for Stefanie Boss since her retirement from the banking industry in 2012. Although she has always loved taking pictures, she refined her skills through community college photography classes and studying with a National Geographic photographer, leading to multiple regional and national awards. Her specialties include landscapes, architecture, and wildlife.

Kristina Butler is a nurse practitioner and a hobbyist photographer. A few years ago, she discovered she had a passion for photography when she began trying to take nice photographs of her three children. Kristina enjoys giving herself photo challenges and finding creative ways to document her kids’ childhoods as they explore their hometown in Western Maryland.

Margaret Clingan has always been fascinated with abandoned places, seeing them as portals to the past. It is her dream to help preserve the memories and history of America, especially rural Western Maryland where she resides, and the surrounding states of Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Since 1992, Margaret’s award-winning works have been featured in numerous galleries throughout Maryland and the tri-state area.

Bonnie B. Collier graduated from Radford College and received her Master of Fine Arts from The George Washington University. She was an instructor of art at the University of Maryland, Hood College, and Montgomery County Public Schools. Her art has ranged from ceramic sculpture that included photographic images, to photographic prints which evolved from the darkroom to digital format. Collier’s work has been published in The Washington Post and The New York Times. Her work is in numerous collections including the Smithsonian Museum of American History, the Edward Orton Jr. Ceramic Foundation, and the Montgomery County Public Art Trust.

Sandi Daniel is a local and national award-winning artist. Her work has been shown in museums, galleries, and at universities, including St. Joseph’s University, the Hecksher Museum, the Steinberg Museum of Art at Hillwood, and the Fort Wayne Museum of Art. Sandi is a graduate of the University of Michigan, where she received a bachelor of science in zoology, and the Hallmark Institute of Photography, where she studied commercial photography. Although her work is constantly changing in theme and technique, there is a distinctive sensibility that runs throughout her imagery.

Lee Day has worked in a range of creative fields – photojournalism, stock photography, interactive media, web design, and creative writing. Returning now to his first love, photography, he is exploring how far he can push the algorithms of the digital image. Lee’s recent shows include Clipping Suburbia – Japan at Soho Photo Gallery, NY, which won a 2021 Critics Choice Award from LensCulture; From the Train Window at Mirage Gallery, Japan; and TrainPans: GPS, a two-screen, digitally choreographed animation with over 15,000 distressed-compression images, which showed at Creative Tech Week 2018. His work has been included in various juried exhibitions.

Chayo de Chevez is a painter, printmaker and lecturer. She has maintained Graphicus Atelier, a gallery and studio in Cumberland, MD, for the past 15 years. She was one of the leaders in the “go green,” revolution that transformed printmaking studios worldwide into non-toxic, safe environments. She presented these ideas to workshops stateside and abroad including in Mexico, Costa Rica, Argentina, Australia, Jamaica, and India. In addition, she has exhibited her works in these countries. Locally she was one of the artists selected to participate in the New Western Maryland Hospital, where over a hundred of her prints hang in hospital rooms, the diagnostic center, and the historical wall. Chayo considers herself a multi-media artist, working in etching, encaustic, photography and digital manipulation. She received an MFA from Instituto Allende, Mexico, and a BFA from University of Houston. Further studies include Santa Reparata, Florence Italy and multiple workshops in the U.S.

Robin Dintiman strives to capture the intimate quality of natural settings suffused in personal memory. Her work has been displayed in the Philadelphia Art Museum, National Museum for Women in the Arts, Chrysler Museum, Arkansas Museum of Art, Nevada State Museum's Center for Education and Environment, and the Commonweal Wellness Center. Robin was nominated for a Fleishhacker "Eureka Award" in 2019 and was named a distinguished alumna by Moore College of Art and Design in 2022. She was granted a 2022-23 PUFFIN Foundation Grant and has been nominated for the DaVinci International Prize to be announced in April 2023.

Sharon Draghi’s work explores intimacy and the solitariness of one’s inner world. By mixing candid and staged imagery, she creates open-ended narratives existing in the space between what is real and what is imagined. Her work has been exhibited at The Fort Wayne Museum of Art, The International Center of Photography, Torpedo Factory Arts Center, The Maria V. Howard Arts Center, Foley Gallery, The Baldwin Photographic Gallery, Filter Photo, the Texas Photographic Society, and The Photography Show by AIPAD, among others. She has been featured in several publications, including Float Photo Magazine, TagTagTag Magazine, It’s Nice That, and Photo District News. Her work is included in some public and private collections, and she is represented by FotoNostrum Gallery in Barcelona.

A multidisciplinary artist, Sean Dudley graduated with honors from the Rhode Island School of Design. His work today is a combination of painting, drawing, photography, and woodworking. Through his art, he explores the nexus of human form with the inherent identity of his materials and techniques. He has exhibited widely in galleries and museums nationwide.

Steven Edson attempts to describe moments in transition while observing the complexity and vastness of people, land, and objects within constantly changing conditions. For these brief moments, time stands still for eternity. In his work, the photograph, constrained within the edges of the frame, offers the viewer the ability to explore and make sense of our shared sense of place from a very specific point of view.

Emily Neville Fisher is an award-winning photographer based in Westchester, New York, where she lives with her husband and three children. She received her bachelor’s degree in fine art at James Madison University, her master's in arts administration from NYU and her certificate for the Track program at the International Center for Photography in NYC. Neville Fisher has been in many juried exhibitions around the country and world, has been published in numerous publications, and has even had her work displayed on a billboard in NYC.

Camila Franco Ribeiro Gomide is a sound and lens-based artist born in Ilhéus, Brazil. She holds a BA in communications from Mississippi Valley State University and an MFA in photographic and electronic media from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Camila’s work has been displayed both domestically and internationally. Her work is part of the permanent collection in the Biggs Museum of American Art in Dover, DE. Camila's work focuses on the immigrant story and the things we let go of when we migrate. Camila has been photographing herself and her family since she moved to the United States in 2014.

A federal education research scientist, Gil Narro Garcia’s artwork stems from his life-long interest and training in the natural sciences. For more than 25 years, he has been creating indoor sculptures out of found, collected, and hand-painted items, placing them in Plexiglass boxes to give them their own boundaries. He has more recently gravitated to outdoor sculptures, repurposing tree parts, harvested wild grape vines, and the frozen ice disks that form in his bird bath at night. He photographs these items and digitally manipulates them to enhance their appearance.

Judy Guenther enjoys photographing a wide variety of subjects during her world travels. Capturing the beauty and art in nature and the people of the world is a special joy for her. She also loves photographing details and abstracts in architecture. She has won several awards, most recently the grand prize in the Washington Post’s 2022 Travel Photography Contest. She is a member of the Northern Virginia Photographic Society, The Art League Gallery of Alexandria, the Maryland Federation of Art in Annapolis, and the F11 Women’s Photography Collective.

Wenda Habenicht grew up in Boulder, Colorado and attended Beloit College in Wisconsin before moving to New York City to earn her MFA at Columbia University. While living in Brooklyn, NY, she created numerous large-scale, outdoor, architecturally and/or anthropomorphically-derived sculptures which were exhibited in the United States and Canada. After a 22-year hiatus from making art, Wenda started taking photographs in 2012 and began developing her series of digital photographic diptychs. Several years later, she returned to building smaller scale sculptures and creating works on paper.

Trotter Hardy has been photographing seriously since about 2013, after a “day job” career as a law professor. His work is spare and evocative, with a mixture of both color and black-and-white imagery that emphasizes patterns and textures.

Drayden Hebb is a retired clinical social worker and lifelong photographer who takes spontaneous photographs that often reflect the relationship between solitude/loneliness and fear/safety.

Kristine Hinrichs has shot and posted to social media every day for twelve years. Her focus is on city life and the interrelationships between the architectural and human elements of the city. She has recently begun printing her images on silk and presenting them as layered pieces to mimic the way the elements of the urban environment move, change, and change each other.

Daniel Horowitz is an urban and landscape photographer focusing on nighttime and long-exposure images. He is drawn to minimal compositions and rarely travels to take a picture. Daniel’s goal is to reveal something wondrous and unexpected in everyday life that might easily be overlooked.

Originally from Germany, Christianna lived in various parts of Europe before coming to New York City in 1996 and Pittsburgh in 1999, where she completed a certificate of photography at Pittsburgh Filmmakers. Two years ago, she relocated to Cleveland, OH. She brings her experiences to her work as an artist and feels that visual art is a means of communication, exploration, and interaction. Christianna has an interest in historical photographic techniques such as cyanotype and vortography. In her work, she likes to challenge traditional representations and invites viewers to reinterpret familiar subjects.

Eric Landes was born just after the middle of the last century near the middle of the country. The stories that he ends up telling, then, are very much from this perspective. There is a view from the middle that offers a benign neutrality even if his feelings are otherwise. It is a Midwesterner's sense of politeness. Eric's subjects are almost always the human-made or human-influenced landscapes as they tell the most honest stories about us and our intentions and desires. Eric received his BFA from the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles and his MFA from Indiana University. He currently teaches at Florida Atlantic University.

Laura K. Lloyd is a fine art photographer specializing in work that references the past. She feels she is recording a slowly vanishing world amid the cacophony and constant technological change of contemporary life. Laura has lived in the Midwest for most of her life, but her travels provide ongoing inspiration.

Adam Long was born in Washington State in 1978. He studied photography in Los Angeles, California (BA), Sunderland, England (MA) and Hartford, Connecticut (MFA). His photographs have been exhibited internationally and are in the permanent collection of The Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, The Hirsch Library – Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and the Colorado Photographic Arts Center, among others.

Daniel Mainzer became a photographer at 12 years of age with the gift of a Brownie Hawkeye camera from his dad. He received a political science degree, but decided as a junior in college that he wanted to be a filmmaker. Now retired from a career in commercial film and photography, his sole focus is on his art and he carries and uses a camera every day. He never knows what he will photograph on any particular day, or how strong those photos will be, but he loves the process.

George J. Miller is a self-taught artist with a passion for photography. His work centers around developing narratives within created, theatre-like stage-sets which he documents in digital photos. These multiple-layered sets may be comprised of found elements, props, vintage photocopies, cut-out paper shapes, or previous photos, all juxtaposed with each other. With natural and artificial light sources in play, a final documentary digital photo then captures the image revealed, with no computer modifications made.

Rebecca Miller is a professor of photography at Drury University in Springfield, MO. She is interested in documenting how and why people protest in the United States and has photographed numerous protests over the last decade including Health Care Reform, Trump rallies, March for Our Lives 2018 & 2022, Black Lives Matter, and Reproductive Rights. Rebecca holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Kansas City Art Institute and a Master of Fine Arts from Florida State University.

Chuck Mintz studied photography at Maine Photographic Workshop, Parsons School of Design, International Center for Photography, Lakeland Community College, and Cuyahoga Community College. He has a BSEE from Purdue University and an MSEE from Cleveland State University. His work can be found in museums, including the Smithsonian Museum of American History, and private and corporate collections worldwide. Chuck was awarded Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards for 2015 and 2017.

A Rhode Island native and extensive traveler, Paul’s approach to photography and life is to remain open, trust his instincts, and discard labels that are divisive. He uses technology to increase his creative options and productivity but not to replace his vision and responsibility. Much of his efforts have focused on travel, event, and fine art photography. His work has been exhibited across the United States as well as in Spain, Greece, and Cuba. A firm believer in giving back to the community, he has served on several art association boards and has donated his skills to community projects in the United States and internationally.

Denise Oehl moved from Northwest Ohio to New York City to study painting at The School of Visual Arts and was awarded BFA with Honors. She eventually began using photography as her medium of choice, first with a pinhole camera and later a medium format film camera. She is particularly drawn to the clicks and whirs of the camera when loading and shooting film and polaroid. Enjoying the hands-on approach, she prints her images in the darkroom, making unique prints with an alternative process. This final part of her creative process is critical to her evolution. She started to paint on her photographs and incorporate encaustic in 2022. She has exhibited widely in the Hudson Valley, Manhattan, Brooklyn, California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, New Mexico, New Jersey, and Poland.

Robert Oehl is a contemporary American photographer. His totally analog photographs are made with a 4” x 5” pinhole film camera, and printed with a hand coated cyanotype emulsion. He is the subject of his photographs, exploring how alternative photographic methods can explore emotion and drama. Robert was born in Detroit in 1952. After graduating from Michigan State University, he moved to New York City, eventually receiving his MFA in photography and printmaking from Pratt Institute. Robert has shown his work at venues including Pamela Salisbury Gallery, Hudson, NY; The National Science; The Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester NY; The Woodstock Artists Association and Museum, Woodstock, NY; The Ely Center of Contemporary Art, New Haven, CT; and The Gallery at Marygrove College, Detroit MI.

Stephanie Paine is a photographer-artist and educator living in the Deep South. She considers her creative practice to be explorative and experimental within photography’s many distinct processes. She is an associate professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Ed’s photographic journey has taken him into the areas of historical documentation, architecture, landscape, nature, and fine art photography. He enjoys studying a subject or scene to determine how the light will affect shapes, tones, and textures as a final print. He has recently completed a series of images for a project called “Life Forms” to answer the question, “What Does Life Look Like?” Ed’s images have appeared and placed in multiple national juried shows.

Visual artist Laurie Peek is committed to transforming loss into beauty through images that speak to the heart and help people heal. She holds an MFA in photography and has worked as a photo librarian, educator, and photojournalist. In recent years, she’s returned to her fine art roots to find meaning in the mundane and to memorialize lost loved ones.

Jean-Paul Picard is a Canadian American artist/photographer whose work has been shown and collected throughout the New York, New Jersey Metro area, including at The Museum of Modern Art, The New York Historical Society, Slater Memorial Museum, Noyes Fine Art Museum, The Morris Museum, and The Hoboken Historical Museum. Jean-Paul is a graduate of Parson School of Design and The New School of Social Research where he majored in graphic design, photography, and printmaking. He now specializes in digital photography and web design, teaches at the Hudson County Schools of Technology Adult High School, and runs his own design business at the Neumann Leather Building in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Thomas Porett specializes in photography, extended media, video, and computer-based imagery. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in photography in 1971 to support his multimedia work and his work has been selected repeatedly to be a part of the Siggraph Art Show. Thomas’ work has been in numerous gallery exhibitions, and his photographs have been included in 18 books.

Bill Rybak is at various times a sculptor, painter, photographer and maker of hybrid artifacts real and unreal. In his photographic work, he is drawn to the immediacy of simple processes and materials that invite a conversation that usually begins with a snapshot taken with his iPhone. Sometimes the image is enough, sometimes he wants to respond to it, edit it, and manipulate it. Bill earned his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, taught at Parsons The New School For Design, is a former board member of the NY Association of Theatrical Artists and Craftspeople, and a former co-operator of the G.A.S. Gallery in Poughkeepsie. He has also worked as a design and fabrication consultant, special effects model maker, wood shop foreman, scenic and display carpenter, prop maker, antique restorer and conservator, and custom fabricator. He lives and works in the Hudson Valley of upstate New York.

Kris Sanford is an associate professor at Central Michigan University. She has exhibited work nationally and internationally, including exhibitions in Amsterdam, Chicago, Denver, Houston, London, Miami, and New York. Her art explores intimate relationships, identity, and psychology.

Mark Slider’s first camera came from sending in cereal box tops when he was six years old. He likes looking at objects and scenes from different perspectives. He always hopes to capture something interesting that makes people stop and ponder what they’re looking at for a few moments.

Richard Allen Stoner retired from 28 years teaching photography at a liberal arts college and university and more than 40 years photographing regional museum collections. For almost 50 years, he has been photographing the landscape, starting in and now returning to black and white, with a thirteen-year color period in between. The natural landscape dominates, but often intersects with the human built. Though digital capture has been used in his professional free-lance work, he remains in love with the abstract language of black and white film and the creative magic in a traditional wet darkroom. The photograph is his love, and music is his muse.

John Stritzinger is a fine art photographer and an active participant in the Philadelphia area’s photography community. His work spans diverse subjects and has won awards while being exhibited in group shows in more than 30 galleries and museums, including the State Museum of PA and the Woodmere Art Museum. John’s work has been included in Black & White Magazine and LensWork books. Since retiring after 40 years working as a creative technologist, John continues to be a curious learner, exploring how past experiences, family history, and our attitudes influence the way we see the world and what we choose to emphasize in artwork.

Peter Szarmach has found a passion for capturing the vastness and details in nature. Composing landscapes and natural abstracts excites him. He hopes to keep exploring nature on a voyage with delightful discoveries.

Michael Hunter Thompson has a BA from Frostburg State University in Graphic Design. He began experimenting with photography in 2011 using layering, texturing, and other manipulation techniques. His style has evolved, now mainly shooting at dusk/nightfall using a more cinematic approach. Thompson’s work has achieved acclaim at the local, state and national levels.

Eric Tomberlin is an artist and educator who has been photographing for nearly 25 years. After working for a number of years as an editorial photographer in New York City, Eric moved to India where he became a founding faculty member at the first photography school on the subcontinent. Eric received his Master of Fine Arts from the University of Texas, Austin and has exhibited his work throughout the United States as well as internationally. His interests include sea level rise, land management, reforestation, and most anything having to do with climate change.

Paula Tremba was raised during the era of black and white television, film, and family photos. Today she embraces her passion for photography through the use of an infrared-converted digital camera to extract and emphasize the mystery, mood, and power of a scene. Her goal is to carry the viewer to another world, and get them to pause, look again, enter a moment of contemplation, and perhaps inject their own story.

Micajah Truitt currently lives, teaches, and plays in the San Diego area. He is a full-time tenured Professor of art at Southwestern College in Chula Vista, California. He is a born and raised Texan who had to leave because he loves mountains and the West. He embarked on several paths in life before becoming a professor, including teaching outdoor living skills to teenagers, working for the National Park Service, and working as a freelance photographer. When Micajah can get away from art and teaching, he is also a climber, a canyoneer, a skier, a caver, and a mountaineer. He is also a member of the San Bernardino County Cave Rescue Team.

Richard Paul Weiblinger is an award winning, and completely self-taught, photographer. Color is a major focus of his work, with many of his pieces exhibiting a chromatically strong theme. Over the last several years, he has begun to exhibit his work and has found himself creating art rather than just documenting the world around him. Richard’s photography portfolio is an accumulation of landscape, nature, macro, architecture, and wildlife images. His work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions, national juried exhibitions, numerous galleries, and has been published in a variety of publications. Richard’s images have been placed in offices and hotels nationwide.

Sandra's passion is exploring cultural and social changes, as well as connections to the human condition. She began her journey in photography in 2007 after studying ceramics in Japan, at the Corcoran School of Art, and at George Washington University. Her photography has received many national and international awards including the CENTER Director’s 1st Place Award, 1st Place KLPA Portrait Award, International Conservation Award in Culture, 1st Place for PX3, Deepest Perspective IPA Award, and the National Geographic Magazine International Contest. Her work has been exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Fine Art in Washington, Aperture Gallery, Annenberg Space of Photography, Florida Museum of Photographic Art, and others. Sandra’s work has been featured in European Photography Magazine, French Culture Papier, FOTOMagaine, American Photography AI-AP Books & Archives, Color, and Black & White Magazine, and is in several private collections.

William H. Whitledge specializes in historical processing photography. They are currently pursuing a Master's Degree in art history from the University of Arkansas: Little Rock, where they were first introduced to historical processes such as cyanotype. Their body of work deals with the self, and usually involves self-portraiture and modeling. They are excited to be exhibiting their work for the ANPCE!

As an artist, Beamie Young has been creating photographs for the past 45 years. The rich tonalities of a black and white image have always been a source of inspiration for her. The work of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston are cornerstones for her—examples of masters of the craft who examine nature at its most elemental. Beamie strives to explore the world with this in mind.