Thresholds 2024: Photography and Urban Architecture

About

Thresholds 2024: Photography and Urban Architecture considers the relationship between photography, urban architecture, and their viewers/users.

Taking street photography as its opening point, Thresholds 2024 considers our connections with and the ways in which urban architecture informs our presence in the world. From expansive skyscrapers to minute ornate details, from periodic styles to historic monuments, from the mundane to the iconic, photography of urban architecture investigates the elements that define our public spaces and engagement capturing the aesthetics of the ever-changing global cityscapes.

Offering an expanded view of the world and street photography as a practice, this juried annual open call brings together sights and visions for a virtual exhibition and a digital exhibition at the Helms Bakery District in Culver City, CA, starting on May 4, 2024.

The Juror

Crista Dix (She/Her/Hers) is the Executive Director at the Griffin Museum of Photography, assuming that role in January of 2022 after two years as the Associate Director.

Before coming to the Griffin Museum in 2020 she spent fifteen years operating her own photography gallery, wall space creative, closing it in 2020 to make the move to New England and the Griffin. Having a career spanning many paths she has a background rooted in science, business and creative art. This well rounded experience provides a solid background for supporting the Griffin’s mission to encourage a broader understanding and appreciation of the visual, emotional and social impact of photographic art.

Her gallery, wall space, supported emerging and mid-career artists with exhibitions, talks, events and art fairs around the country. As an internationally known gallery, Crista worked with clients all over the world and represented national and international artists. In addition to wall space’s special event and exhibition schedule, it hosted a series of artist lectures, studio and community events.

Ms. Dix, wall space and the artists who were part of its success believed in giving back, creating a charitable giving program called Life Support. In ten years Life Support worked with over 400 artists, donating over $80,000 to charitable foundations Doctors Without Borders, Direct Relief and Habitat for Humanity.

Ms. Dix has written essays about photography, introducing creative artists work to a broader community. She has been a member of numerous panels and discussions on the craft of photography, juried creative competitions and has participated in major portfolio reviews across the country in cities like Houston, Portland, Los Angeles, Santa Fe and New Orleans.

Price Sheet and Instructions for Purchasing Artwork

Download/view price sheet HERE.

Interested in purchasing artwork? Please email info@lacphoto.org and a representative will contact you ASAP.  Thank you!

Juror Statement

Glass. Steel. Concrete, all immovable permanent and weighty. While that may be the material, the shape, construction or vision of architecture itself is far from weighty. Buildings, dwellings and public space have life, movement, form.

We look at photographs of buildings with wonder. Who lives there? Why that spot? What happens inside that space? Architecture asks more questions that provides answers. Multilayered, these buildings house life, create space, contain objects, treasures and memories. The very structures are conversation pieces. Everyone has an opinion when it comes to shape, size, color and texture. As solutions to a need, each building has a unique position to hold amongst its neighbors on its block.

Each of the photos in Thresholds transcend the physical barriers of structure and give us mystery, form and transition. Each of these images show signs of life, including the public and private spaces we inhabit. This group of images has us looking up, down, sideways, through walls, barriers and fencing. What is on the other side? How do we congregate, how do we share space? When we look up at the sky, what impedes our vision? When we look down on a traffic circle, how many people transit that space? How many interactions between cars, bicycles, people walking intersect and how are their lives changed because of that interaction?

Many of these photographs are abstract, mashing style, texture, light and form. Always organic, but providing secure structure, these images invite us to explore. We see the interiors, questioning the exteriors.  We are caught asking questions, searching for answers. Why plant that tree there?

Each of these images tell a story. Who was there last? Whats happening now? Light illuminating surfaces, highlighting and diminishing structure, everything is transitory.

Thank you to every artist who submitted, who spent time looking up and looking out at the landscape,  who gave me so much to review, look at and experience. Your work defines a landscape filled with possibility. – Crista Dix

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In First Place, the photograph by Eric Smith, gives us a bird’s eye view of an iconic landscape at the magic hour. Looking at the people inhabiting the space, with our focus drawn outward, we feel the magic of Hollywood, the iconic structure of the Observatory, and the community exploring the space. It is as if time is standing still.

Second Place winner, Leanne Trivett’s image is magnetic. Filled with light, merging interior and exterior, and our final gift after reviewing every inch of the photo is seeing the person in the chair, faceless yet familiar. The magic of the night light, the comfort of home and the people we share it with.

Jess Steven’s Third Place image is poignant, heartbreaking and beautiful. The natural world surrounds us, yet it is almost always beyond reach. Our lives filled with daily chaos, makes our dream of the quiet spaces so close and yet so far.  Surrounded by green, boxed in glass, echoing the fragile nature of what we see, and the containment we find ourselves in.