The Music Center Spotlight Awards in Photography
image by Naomi Jahan – North Hollywood HS, 12th Grade
I recently had the great pleasure of sitting on the jury for The Music Center’s Spotlight Awards in Photography. Spotlight is a free scholarship and training in the arts program, which encourages personal and artistic growth, while exploring new possibilities in the arts open to all High School students in Southern California. Britt Salvesen, the Photography Curator from the Los Angeles County Art Museum, Suné Woods, an educator and artist from Cal Arts, Genaro Molina, an award winning Los Angeles Times photographer, and Mario de Lopez, a fine art and commercial photographer joined me in the jurying process.
I didn’t know what to expect from the process of looking at photographs taken by high school students all across Southern California and I certainly wasn’t expecting the profound impact that it would have on me. The first day, the panel of jurors went through projected images, culling the numbers down to fifteen finalists. We met a month later, where those fifteen young and talented photographers with portfolios in hand, shared not only their photographs and journey, but insights into who they were and where they wanted to go as people and as photographers. I was wowed by their intelligence, their desire to seek out photography even when it wasn’t available in their school, and by how self possessed and focused they were.
A week after we met, we gathered again, at LACMA, where Britt Salvesen gave us a guided tour through the new exhibition See the Light-Photography, Perception, Cognition: The Marjorie and Leonard Vernon Collection, sharing her unique presentation of the exhibition. Opening yesterday, the fifteen photographers were given an exhibition featuring all the Spotlight semifinal artwork and it will run from March 8 to March 29 at The Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena. For more information about The Music Center’s Spotlight program, please visit www.musiccenter.org/spotlight. Today I am sharing the fifteen selected images and in weeks ahead will highlight the Grand Prize Finalists and Honorable in Photography. Congrats to all.
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