2023 Juror
Ann Jastrab
On jurying the Somerville Toy Camera Fest exhibitions:
There’s a picture of me at Dead Woman’s Pass in the Andes maybe 13 years ago. What am I holding? A walking stick, sure, but also my Holga camera, covered in electrical tape. What could be better than a light weight perfectly imperfect camera when you’re dragging yourself over a 14,000 foot pass?
And what else could be perfectly imperfect, or really imperfectly perfect? The images in this year’s Somerville Toy Camera Festival. It’s an exhibition I’ve been wanting to jury for years and I wasn’t disappointed. So many photographs, vignetted and sun-flared and just soft enough, to make me remember the dream that life can be. Thank you to all the artists for taking me on an incredible journey!
— Ann Jastrab, August 2023
Ann Jastrab is Executive Director at the Center for Photographic Art (CPA) in Carmel, California, and former gallery director at RayKo Photo Center in San Francisco.
Originally from the Utica, NY area, Ann received a BA in English Literature and a BA in Studio Art from Hartwick College before completing her MFA in photography at the Savannah College of Art and Design in 1995. After graduation, she joined the resident faculty at the Maine Photographic Workshops and taught there for nearly a decade in both their year-round program and their intensive summer workshops. After living and working in Sweden, India, Australia and a number of places in between including Manhattan, Ann eventually moved to Los Angeles where she printed for the Motion Picture Academy (while still driving back to Maine every summer to teach photography).
Finally Ann made her way north to San Francisco where she worked as the gallery director at the beloved RayKo Photo Center for 10 years until their closure. She curated many exhibitions for RayKo during her tenure while also jurying, curating, and organizing numerous exhibitions for other national and international venues outside of the San Francisco Bay Area. While championing artists, she also created a thriving artist-in-residence program at RayKo where recent residents Kathya Marie Landeros, Meghann Riepenhoff, Carlos Javier Ortiz, and McNair Evans all received Guggenheim Fellowships. Prior to taking the position of executive director of CPA, Ann worked as the gallery manager at Scott Nichols Gallery in San Francisco. She has served on numerous boards and fundraising committees and in addition to being a curator and an educator, Ann is a writer and editor and she is also a fine art photographer who still carries around a wooden view camera…and a metal one too.
Past STCF jurors have included: Laidric Stevenson; Gordon Stettinius; Jennifer Shaw; Isa Leshko; Michael Kirchoff; Aline Smithson; Lou Jones; Bill Franson; Alison Nordstrom; Christopher James; Meg Birnbaum