Jurors 2024
Stacy Kranitz - Photographer
(Appalachia, TN) – Working within the documentary tradition, Pulitzer Prize Winner Stacy Kranitz makes photographs that acknowledge the limits of photographic representation. Her images do not tell the “truth” but are honest about their inherent shortcomings, and thus reclaim these failures (exoticism, ambiguity, fetishization) as sympathetic equivalents in order to more forcefully convey the complexity and instability of the lives, places, and moments they depict.
Kranitz was born in Kentucky and currently lives in the Appalachian Mountains of eastern Tennessee. She is a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow. Additional awards include the Michael P. Smith Fund for Documentary Photography (2017), a Southern Documentary Fund Research and Development grant (2020), a Puffin Foundation grant (2022), and a Center for Documentation Fellowship (2023). Her work was shortlisted for the Louis Roederer Discovery Award (2019). She has presented solo exhibitions of her photographs at the Diffusion Festival of Photography in Cardiff, Wales (2015), the Rencontres d’Arles in Arles, France, the Cortona on the Move festival in Cortona, Italy (2022) and the Tennessee Triennial (2023) Her photographs are in several public collections including the Harvard Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Art, Houston, and Duke Universities, Archive of Documentary Arts She works as an assignment photographer for publications including Time, National Geographic, the New York Times, Vanity Fair, the Atlantic and Mother Jones. Her first monograph, As it Was Give(n) to Me, was published by Twin Palms in 2022. It was shortlisted for a Paris Photo – Aperture First Photobook Award.
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Judith L. Huacuja, PhD
(Dayton, OH) – Judith L. Huacuja, PhD, is a Chicana scholar who researches across the disciplines of ethnic studies, women and gender studies, and visual culture. As a Professor of Art History, she brings expertise in Art Activism, Latin American, African American, and non-Western contemporary art histories. Her research explores the cultural histories of African American and Latinx art of the Midwest as she analyzes aesthetics and philosophies in relation to minority issues of resistance and cultural change. Her publications discuss the art of Willis Bing Davis, Curtis Barnes Sr., Los Dialoguistas, Yolanda Lopez, Celia Herrera Rodriguez, and others. Her research grants include the College Art Association, the Smithsonian Institution, UC MEXUS, Ohio Humanities Council and Ohio Arts Council.
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Ed Dixon - Gallerists
(Dayton, OH) – Ed Dixon is a native Daytonian and opened the Edward A. Dixon Gallery in the Fall of 2017 in Downtown Dayton, Ohio. After years of involvement in the music, film and fashion industry, Ed decided to turn his attention to his passion for visual art and began the curation of artwork from artists on a world-wide scale. He has curated and hosted multiple shows at the gallery and exhibited at Artexpo New York (2024). Artists who have exhibited at the gallery include Sabrina Terence, Cedric Michael Cox, Marilynn Page, Cynthia Kukla, Erica Arndts and the late, legendary Beatles animator Ron Campbell. Exhibition themes at the gallery have included We’re Doing It ALL Wrong® and JOY (That’s Just What I needed). He also served on panels for exhibitions and artist grants such as Art of Soul! Juried Art Show presented by NAAMCC , the Ohio Art League Fall Show and the Culture Works Special Projects Grant.
Ed spends much of his time promoting the visual arts, he serves on the Dayton Art Institute Collections Committee, the Executive Committee for the Dayton Sister City Committee, maintains his realtor license, serves in an advisory role for the Dayton Emerging Fashion Incubator, writes for his travel blog and is an avid investor. Additionally, Ed is a patron and a member of several local art organizations including the Dayton Society of Artists, the African-American Visual Arts Guild, The Contemporary and the Dayton Art Institute, as well as, the Cincinnati Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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