Amy Osborne is a photojournalist and documentary photographer based in San Francisco who specializes in long-term projects. For the past year, Amy has been documenting Lieutenant Taylor Miller, the first openly transitioning officer in the Coast Guard. Amy’s project was recently published in the Washington Post, and the story prompted the Coast Guard Commandant to take a stand on the issue. Following the story’s release, he personally reached out to Lieutenant Miller and publicly vowed he would not break faith with transgender members of the Coast Guard. Amy continues to document Taylor’s transition and plans to continue photographing Taylor as she completes gender reassignment surgery. Amy also works part-time as a contributing photographer for the San Francisco Chronicle and as a full-time mom.
Born in Springfield, Missouri, Joshua Smith earned his M.F.A. in photography from the San Francisco Art Institute, and has been living and working in the Bay Area since 2004. Throughout his career, he has explored various photographic projects. His most recent project, The First Years, documents his own expanding family. When he and his wife had two boys within two years of each other, they experienced a swift change in their family dynamic and had to confront the unknown. The unremitting demands of parenthood contained joy, tenderness, vulnerability, frustration, and fear all at once. The weight of being fully needed by their children afforded a sense of purpose, but also denied them their autonomy and individuality. Under the guise of family historian, Smith works to examine and better understand this new way of being. Through this process, he explores all the contradictions and intricacies that exist within the complex and universal realm of family. Smith has exhibited widely within the Bay Area and beyond, including Stanford University, the a.Muse gallery in San Francisco, and SF Art Market. Smith is a photography instructor at Marin Academy and resides in Pacifica, CA with his wife and two sons.
The Storytellers lecture series is curated in collaboration with Judy Walgren, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer and currently the editorial director for ViewFind. Storytellers presents cutting-edge photographers from across the country whose approach to visual storytelling often blurs the lines between journalistic, documentary, and fine art photography. The “story” embedded in a photograph or group of photographs is what creates the understanding and connection between audience and photograph. Photojournalism has been the cornerstone of this narrative approach to image-making, but with shifting trends in photography production and consumption, Storytellers aims to broaden the conversation in and about successful modes of photographic practice.
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SF CAMERAWORK
1011 Market Street, San Francisco, USA
September 19, 2017 to September 19, 2017
