Jurors for the Inaugural IRevelar Competition
Rick Pérez, Assistant Director, Stephen Cohen Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
 RICK PEREZ Holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Art History from Tulane University, with a focus in photography and Latin American art. He has ten years experience in the fine art photography field, at galleries in New Orleans, New York and Los Angeles.
The Stephen Cohen Gallery, where he currently serves as Assistant Director, opened in 1992 and has presented over one hundred exhibitions of both vintage and contemporary photographs and photo-related artwork. An early emphasis on 20th century documentary and photojournalism has expanded to include the exploration and support of the genres of surrealism, portraiture, and collage. The gallery has exhibited digital photography for many years, and has helped to increase acceptance for this format as an alternative to traditional processes. He is interested in viewing all genres of photography, particularly work that moves beyond the traditional. He would especially like to see work using color, digital, mixed media, and other forms of contemporary photography.
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George Slade, Artistic Director, Minnesota Center for Photography, Minneapolis, Minnesota
 GEORGE SLADE is an historian of photography and a native Minnesotan. He became the artistic director of the Minnesota Center for Photography in 2003 after serving as a curator, editor, writer, and advisor to the organization since 1992. He has also directed the MCP/McKnight Foundation Artist Fellowships for Photographers Program since 1998 (www.mcknightphoto.org). His most recent projects at MCP include Hand in Hand: Domestic and Creative Partnerships in the Digital Age, Jerome Liebling: Selected Photographs, Choreographic: Images of Movement, Downriver: New Orleans Before the Flood (all 2006), and Three Gorges, which will appear in November 2007 (www.mncp.org). Slade has served as a panelist and portfolio reviewer for the Ohio Arts Council, Minnesota State Arts Board, Minnesota State Fair, Fotofest Meeting Place (Houston), Society for Photographic Education, Critical Mass and Photolucida (both Portland, OR). For Minnesota Artists Online (mnartists.org) he has written essays and reviews, and compiled a collection of 92 images of the Minnesota State Fair from three decades. He has contributed essays and reviews to the Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century Photography (Routledge, 2006), exposure, photoeye Booklist, Minnesota History, and other publications. He edited and co-wrote Minnesota In Our Time: A Photographic Portrait (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2000). He lives in St. Paul with his two daughters.
JUROR STATEMENT
My work as a curator has been guided and informed by looking at and interacting with photographs and artists for the last 25 years. I try to take every picture on its own merits; inevitably, many forces intercede and weigh on my awareness. But I like to consider what every picture does for me. Does it expand my awareness of the world? Does it enhance my understanding of photography's unique qualities of representation? Regarding those issues, does the picture add to what I have seen by other photographers, stake out new territory, or increase my appreciation for familiar ground? I look at myself looking. The degree to which a picture interests me, piques my curiosity, or pushes my buttons is always worth noting. All of these things are weighed together, and a body of work is seen as compelling or not to the extent that it responds to a complicated, highly subjective, and often site-, set-, or time-specific group of conditions and criteria.
21st-century photography is a multifaceted enterprise. Both ancient and modern practices commingle in a medium that is scarcely old enough to have set anything conceptual or formal in stone; photography is constantly hungry for innovation, for new tools that enhance its ability to articulate new and old meanings derived from the physical world. Photography's ties to reality, to real materials intrinsic both as subject matter and means of creation, provide an endless source of fascination for me. My view is a catholic one, admitting many styles and approaches; my selectivity as a juror seeks to identify excellence where it resides within the frames I encounter.
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Clint Willour, Curator, Galveston Arts Center, Galveston, TX
 CLINT WILLOUR, curator of the Galveston Arts Center for the past seventeen years, has been an art professional for thirty-five years. He is active on boards of numerous arts organizations in Texas and has served as a juror for over sixty competitions in his career. He curates 24 exhibitions per year in Galveston, and serves regularly as a guest curator for institutions throughout the state of Texas. He is known for the multi disciplinary focus of his taste. He is a past President of the Board of the Houston Center for Photography and a current member of their Programming Committee, Chair of the Photography Accessions Sub-committee of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, a member of the Art Committee of FotoFest, Houston, board member of Photo Forum at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and has been a meeting place reviewer at every FotoFest, Houston, (and last year, Beijing, China) as well as reviewing portfolios for the Houston Center for Photography; the Texas Photographic Society; Photo Americas in Tulsa, Oklahoma; Photolucida in Portland, Oregon; Review Santa Fe, New Mexico; Mois de la Photo in Montreal, Quebec; Les Rencontres d’Arles, France; Photo Primavera in Barcelona, Spain and the Centro Cultural Borges, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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