2009 PIEA Contest Judges

Cheryl Younger
Cheryl Younger was the founding director of the National Graduate Seminar, located first at New York University and later Columbia University. The archive is now housed in the Getty Museum Research Library. Previously she designed and directed the Post Secondary Education program for Film in the Cites in St. Paul and served as chair of the National Society for Photographic Education. She has taught all ages of photography students, preschool to graduate level, most recently at the International Center for Photography in New York City. Presently she is on a three year adventure tour of the world.

David Leeson
Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist David Leeson has been on staff at the Dallas Morning News since 1984. He has also worked for the Abilene Reporter News and the Times-Picayune in New Orleans.
He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize three times prior to winning the award in 2004, along with colleague Cheryl Diaz Meyer, for photographs made in March and April 2003 while on the front lines with the US Army 3rd Infantry Division during the invasion of Iraq. He has also won two Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards and numerous regional, state and national awards.
In the fall of 2000, he began shooting video for the Dallas Morning News, making him the first staff photographer in the nation shooting video full-time for a newspaper. Since then he has completed more than seven documentary films.
Two of his documentaries from the war also won honors. War Stories (2003) won a National Headliners Award, a national Edward R. Murrow Award and a regional Emmy for best television documentary. Dust to Dust (2004) was named a finalist for Best Short Film at the USA Film Festival. He won a second Emmy in 2007 as producer/editor of combat footage from Afghanistan.
In 2006, Leeson was named Innovator of the Year in Photojournalism by American Photo magazine for his work using frame grabs for newspaper daily still assignments. The results of his efforts have culminated in the growing trend by newspapers to use existing photo staff, transitioned to high-definition video cameras, to obtain both video and stills (frame grabs) from a single assignment.
Leeson is a graduate of Abilene Christian University, is married and has five children.
 

Vicki Goldberg
Writer and critic Vicki Goldberg has been an instrumental influence in photography for decades. her articles on photography have appeared regularly in the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Smithsonian, American Photo, Aperture, Paris Photo and Foto and Video (Russia).
She has authored or co-authored several important books on photography including The Power of Photography: How Photographs Changed our Lives, 1991, Margaret Bourke-White: A Biography, 1986 and Light Matters (a selection of essays), Aperture 2005.
She has curated several important photographic exhibitions including: Points of Entry: American Immigration, Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, 1995 and Bourke-White: A Retrospective, International Center of Photography, 1988-90, two year tour of U. S. and Japan.
Her awards include:
Long Chen Cup Award (“for excellent achievement in promoting photography in the world), China, 2006
Dudley Johnston Award, The Royal Photographic Society, 1999
International Center of Photography, Infinity Award for Writing, 1997
Photographic Administrators, Inc., Award for Writing, 1997
Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism, School of Journalism, University of Missouri at Columbia, 1995 (previously given only to photographers)

PIEA Contest Judges 2008

Barbara Bridgers-Johnson

Barbara Bridgers-Johnson, the General Manager for Imaging and Photography at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, has been in charge of the Museum’s in-house photography program since 1986.  She manages a staff of 12 full-time photographers, 6 assistant photographers, and a ten-person administrative, printing and production group. The department began shooting digitally in 1986, and completed the transition to a fully digital workflow in the summer of 1996. Today, the Photograph Studio focuses on direct digital capture, high resolution scanning and post-production, and custom ink-jet prints and facsimiles. Images created in the studio appear in the pages of the beautiful and award-winning exhibition catalogues produced by the Museum, on the Met’s website, and are represented in myriad merchandising products found throughout the Museum’s stores and satellite shops around the world. 

Roy Flukinger

Roy Flukinger is the present Research Curator of Photography and former Senior Curator of Photography and Film of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin.
He has published and lectured extensively in the fields of regional, cultural and contemporary photography and the history of art and photography, and has produced or participated in nearly eighty.
He has edited catalogues and organized exhibitions including Go Out and Look: The Photography of Russell Lee, A Lewis Carroll Centenary and Visiones de Tejanos/Visions of Texans. Among his later publications are: “To Help the World to See: The Photographic Career of Eliot Elisofon;  David Douglas Duncan: One Life, A Photographic Odyssey;  Windows of Light;  and Photography:  The First 150 Years.
His service on professional boards has included, among others, the Texas Photographic Society, the Texas Humanities Resource Center, the Houston Fotofest, photolucida, the Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus, the Houston Center of Photography, and the Steering Committee for the Texas Historical Foundation's Historical Photographs Project. 

Rich Clarkson

Named by American Photo magazine as one of the 50 most influential individuals in American photography, Clarkson’s career includes stints as director of photography and senior assistant editor of the National Geographic Society, assistant managing editor of The Denver Post,  director of photography of The Topeka (Ks.) Capital-Journal and as contract/contributing photographer for 20 years to Sports Illustrated.

A past-president of the National Press Photographers Association, he is currently chair of the NPPA Council of Presidents, a trustee of the William Allen White Foundation of the University of Kansas School of Journalism, a trustee of the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Foundation, a member of the adjunct faculty of the University of Colorado School of Journalism and Mass Communication and a member of the advisory council of the National Museum of Wildlife Art.

He has been a Pulitzer Prize juror, a lecturer in a variety of venues from the International Center of Photography in New York City to the Sasakawa Foundation in Tokyo.  He organized the 50th anniversary celebration of the NPPA including a rededication of the Iwo Jima Memorial in Washington and a week-long series of events.

He has co-authored six books and his Denver company has packaged 15 books including Brian Lanker’s “I Dream A World,” portraits of America’s great black women which became the best-selling trade coffeetable book in American publishing history.

He organized the photographic coverage of the Munich and Montreal Olympics for Time magazine, the Moscow Olympics for Sports Illustrated and was the overall coordination and director of photography in the main Olympic stadium for the Atlanta games.

PIEA Contest Judges 2007

Jay Dickman is a National Geographic and Pulitzer-Prize winning photographer from Colorado. He has participated in 15 of the Day in the Life of book projects and several NPPA “Flying Short Courses” and has received the Golden Eye Award from the World Press organization. He shot over 25 assignments for National Geographic magazine. A photojournalist for over 30 years, Jay covered the war in El Salvador, the Olympics, political conventions and six Super Bowls and many other stories. Dickman hosts his own photography workshops in Scotland, France and the Chesapeake Bay area of Maryland. He is a regular faculty member at The Maine Photographic Workshops, Photography at the Summit and participates in the American Photo Mentor Series Workshops.
 

Julie Simpson has been the managing editor of Photographer’s Forum magazine in Santa Barbara, CA for the past eight years. She organizes and oversees the magazine’s student photo contests and works on the Best of Photography Annual and the Best of College Photography Annual and on Serbin Communications’ Directory of Illustration, At-Edge (source book for commercial photographers), Medical Illustration Source Book and Designer Jewelry Showcase. Serbin Communications has been a prize sponsor of the PIEA Contests for many years.
 

Howard Wallach retired from chair of the photo department at Abraham Lincoln High School in Brooklyn, NY several years ago and now works as a freelance writer and technical consultant to several photographic manufacturing firms. Howard divides his time between his home in Brooklyn and a condo in Aspen, Colorado. While he was at Abraham Lincoln High, Howard was an active PIEA member and a speaker at the PIEA Photo Education Conference. His students frequently won many awards in national and international photo contests including many top awards in the PIEA Contests.