I forgot to mention in my last post some good news I’ve recently received. The first was that some of my images were included in the group exhibition of F-Stop Magazine Issue 48 Relations.

The second is that I was named a finalist in Photolucida’s Critical Mass. This is a really interesting program that I think is great. You first pay an entry fee to go to the prescreening jury. This year, there were 20+ people on the prescreening jury. The jury chooses the top 20o finalists, whose work is then sent to an international jury of more than 200 jurors: photo editors, curators, publishers, gallery owners and other people involved in the industry. You pay an additional fee of $200 if you’re a finalist, but your work gets seen by a lot of people. This jury chooses the top 50, who I guess are the winners. A travelling exhibition is created from their work, and at least one of them wins a book award. So it’s less a competition and more a vehicle to get your work seen by the industry. What I like about the program is that you get something for your entry fee: everybody who enters gets a CD of all the entries and they also receive the final book(s) from the book award winner(s).

I entered in 2009. I didn’t become a finalist, and when I saw the CD, I saw why. So much of the submitted work was really great. It was inspiring to get to see it, and I learned a lot from that CD. I also felt quite vindicated when several of my favourites from the CD became part of the Top 50. (Dorothy Deiss, Jessica Todd Harper, Sarah Malakoff, and Rania Matar, I’m looking at you. And while I’m on the subject, if you’re at all interested in motherhood and/or the domestic in photography you really must check out Jessica Todd Harper’s work – it is absolutely stunning.) As well, I received the two books that were produced that year: Alejandro Cartagena’s Suburbia Mexicana and Birthe Piontek’s The Idea of North, which I’m particularly fond of.

Anyways, I’m so stoked to be a finalist.