Curator project for LA Photo Curator
- Curating project “Memories” – am honored to be the curator for the November exhibit at LA Photo Curator. Winners have been selected, please see LA Photo Curator website for 1st, 2nd and 3 honorable mentions. Congratulations to the winning photographers.
CURATOR RICHARD S. CHOW: “Each submission in this open call is unique and compelling. Photographers offered their interpretations of “memories” with a wide variety of quality images. I immensely enjoyed reviewing each entry, and I’d to mention that the margin of placement were tiny.
For the first place winner, I have selected Samanta Aretino, whose image offers many layers of complexities for the viewers to contemplate. Aside from being aesthetically compelling, in the image I see a gamut of sentiments… joy, sadness, indifference, steady gaze, and last of all a sense of secrecy, an unanswered and enigmatic mystery. This image plays well with the theme of memories, often not so distinct and with seemingly unconnected fragments.”
Chow askes Aretino, “How does this image, Memories in Motion, relate to your own unique memories, and how was that manifested?”
SAMANTA ARETINO: “My image “Memories in motion” is related to my own memories because it express the way my memory travels, shifts, moves towards moments of my life, both in adolescence and childhood, where different emotions are mixed.
The image generated by this movement is not static, it is not defined. I can´t see it completely because it is distorted by the same memories and the new experiences.”
Read more about first place winner Samanta Aretino:
Gifted with a strong affinity for cityscapes and color, many of Aretino’s photographs focus on women, children, and urban landscape.
However, her work never comes off as something simply dedicated to a cause.
She explores multiple techniques and subjects.
With clever and skillful framing, Aretino forces her viewers to care about her subjects and take an interest in them.
Although they appear frequently isolated, there’s an implication of the world around them that makes them more than lonely, existential figures.