Aline Smithson
Juror’s Statement
Creative Portraiture
2021
 
As the summer dwindles down to its final glory, I spent the last of my vacation, sitting by a lake and looking at hundreds and hundreds of images from one of my favorite genres in photography: Creative Portraiture. I have just spent the last week immersed in your photographs, revisiting and reconsidering each image. It was an exciting and daunting process, and, in the end, I selected far more images than LACP could hang on the walls. So, thank you for submitting so much excellent work and making my decisions so difficult! It was inspiring to see the range of approaches and the array of imaginative imagery. Please know that this was not a cursory examination, but a long hard look at your work. Thank you to all who submitted such varied and spectacular approaches to considering each other.
 
With the ubiquitous-ness of photography today, creative approaches to all genres of photography shift the norm and reinvigorate the medium, as evidenced by all the submissions to this exhibition. The photographs selected for the exhibition are like small novellas, captured somewhere between the beginning, middle, or ending of a personal narrative or way of seeing. Creative Portraiture is different than traditional portraiture—it allows the photographer to intervene with the experience, adding an imaginative reconsideration of the person in front of the camera.
 
It is not an easy task to juror an exhibition, especially one where metaphor, intention, and the essence of a human being needs to be conveyed in a single image. With all exhibitions, there are many wall-worthy submissions that come steps away from the finish line, only to be rejected due to constraints of space. As a juror, I look for unique approaches to a theme, photographs that are not literal or obvious interpretations, and are well executed and well considered photographs. I think about the quality of the photograph itself, the quality of expression, and look for deeper meaning, levity, or creativity. Finally, I am not only selecting single images, but also curating a group of photographs into an exhibition that needs feel fresh and have a strong point of view.
 
Thank you to the Los Angeles Center of Photography for this wonderful opportunity. Congratulations to all the artists included in Creative Portraiture.

We hope you will all join us for the opening reception at LACP on Monday, October 25, 7-10 pm PST, 2021. Aline Smithson will be present and will award prizes that night.