NOTE FROM BLOOMFIELD:
"I am honored that Laurie Freitag asked me to curate this online exhibit for L.A. Photo Curator, and so appreciate all she does for photography, and the photography community. 
 
And a big thank you to all the artists who submitted to this call.  To spend time with your thoughtfully conceived and beautifully realized works was a privilege.  I only wish I could have seen the works in person and held them in my hands.
 
I was completely taken aback by the quality of the imagery submitted— from the darkly mysterious to the abstract, from the classically beautiful to minimalist perfection, and on to the image as object.  I went through these images so many times over the last two weeks, both individually, and as a slide show.   I chose the award winners based on some obvious factors, such as degree of difficulty in technique— and the degree to which that technique successfully meshed with the image content, ultimately creating a compelling piece of art.  And, finally, I chose imagery that stayed fixed in my mind long after I stopped looking. 
 
The First Place award goes to Chris Peregoy’s Light Modulator series, with the winning image, Light Modulator-021.  I could never get this work out of my head, and still can’t.  The seeming simplicity of these images belies a rich complexity.  I love that, at its core, the images are all about photography— that is, simply working with light.  The circularity of these shapes, with repetition in the shadows, and the way the light falls on the edges of each torn paper edge, I found stunningly beautiful and smartly executed.  The dry plate collodion process was an inspired choice.  I am drawn to the warmth of Light Modulator-021, especially, with those jagged and imprecise blue edges, which echo the torn edges of the paper curls.  The imperfection of that process itself also provides an intriguing contrast to those perfect repeating circles.  One of my favorite photographers is František Drtikol, a Czech photographer from the 1930’s who created paper cutouts of the human form, working with light, shadow, and form, in some similar ways.  The influence of László Moholy-Nagy is also seen here in those geometric shapes, and- again- in the exploration of light, shadow, form and shape.  While Peregoy’s images, and his process, might give a nod to past influences, his images are all his own.  They are unique, original, and exquisitely realized.  I so enjoyed looking at them, again and again.
   

Theme: Bloomfield says, “This call is for work that is (1) hand-printed in an ‘alternative’ process (e.g., platinum; cyanotype; gum bichromate; carbon; salt, lumen, silver-gelatin, photogravures, anthotype, gumoil)— the sky is the limit.  This includes any printing technique that is alternative to straight digital.  In this call, an ‘alternative technique’ also includes (2) interpreting your images via a pinhole/zone-plate, or toy camera (e.g., Holga, Diana, home-made).
 
There are so many compelling ways of interpreting your imagery. How about a photogram?  Your original should have been made using an alternative technique, whether that’s in the printing, or some primitive camera— lensless, or otherwise."