Traci Bartlow

A native of Oakland, California, Traci Bartlow is an artist and entrepreneur with a longstanding career as an activist, business owner, photographer, dance educator, lecturer, curator, and cultural archivist. In 2023 she received a proclamation from the mayor of Oakland, California recognizing her significant contributions as “a great woman of Hip Hop.” This reflects decades of work in Hip Hop culture the areas of dance and photography.

Bartlow is a story consultant and contributing writer for the 2022 EMMY award-winning film If Cities Could Dance – Oakland Boogaloo.  She has served her community for many years as a founding member of EastSide Cultural Center, a board member for City Center Dance Theater, and consulted with several arts and social justice organizations on scaling their impact on their changing neighborhoods.

In 2024 she was awarded a YBCA Creative Corps Fellowship in support of her transformative community engagement programming. Currently she is preparing to publish a coffee table photography book of photographs and stories of her work as a photojournalist in the 1990s.

Brian L. Frank

b. 1979

A San Francisco native, Brian L. Frank has created social documentary projects across the Americas focusing on cultural identity, social inequality, violence, workers rights and the environment.

Most recently, he co-founded the Tacet-Eye Long Form Documentary Workshop. His recent collaboration with For Freedoms and National Geographic documents faith in the California migrant worker community. He is a Professor of Journalism and a Catchlight Global-Fellow. His work with Catchlight, The Pulitzer Center and The Marshall Project has focused on mass incarceration’s effects on minority communities and visuals-based, education curriculum development.

His 2-year project, Downstream, Death of the Colorado, is held in permanent collection at the United States Library of Congress and was recognized by POYi with the Global Vision Award. His work has been recognized with numerous other awards both nationally and internationally.

Upon completing the Journalism program at SFSU, he worked primarily for The Wall Street Journal from 2008 – 2014 and currently focuses on long-term documentary magazine features in California, the American Southwest, and Mexico.

His work has frequently appeared in most major national and international publications, including National Geographic, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, Harpers, The Atlantic, Mother Jones, The New York Times and many other publications.

Tara Pixley

Tara Pixley is a queer Jamaican-American photojournalist and assistant professor of journalism at Temple University. Her photography, which reimagines race, gender, and LGBTQ+ and immigrant communities through a liberation lens, has appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, Newsweek, Allure, HuffPost, ProPublica, Nieman Reports, and ESPN, among many others.

She is a 2022 Reynolds Journalism Fellow, a 2021 IWMF NextGen fellow, a 2020 World Press Photo Solutions Visual Journalism Initiative awardee, and a visiting 2016 Knight fellow at Harvard University’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism.

Pixley is the secretary of the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) Board and the executive director of Authority Collective, an organization dedicated to establishing equity in visual media.

Lydia Chebbine

Gary Jules

Gary Jules is an acclaimed singer-songwriter best known for his hauntingly beautiful rendition of “Mad World.” Born in Fresno, California and raised in the surf culture of San Diego, Jules began his journey as a singer-songwriter in the late 90s and has graced stages worldwide including Glastonbury, T in the Park, London’s Astoria, SXSW, The Green Man Festival, Latitude Festival, The Troubadour and El Rey theaters in Los Angeles, New York’s Bowery Ballroom, as well as features on Top of the Pops and BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge.

Photo by Shervin Lainez

Tamir Kalifa

Tamir Kalifa is a photojournalist currently based between Berlin, Germany, and Austin, Texas. He is committed to work focused on human rights and the lasting effects of gun violence as well as stories at the intersection of political and environmental issues. He believes compassionate visual storytelling can raise questions that lead to a better understanding of ourselves and one another. Tamir is a winner of the American Mosaic Journalism Prize and is a frequent contributor to The New York Times, The Washington Post, Texas Monthly and others. He is also a multi-instrumentalist and wrote, recorded, and performed original music as a member of Mother Falcon, an Austin, Texas-based orchestral indie-rock ensemble.

Jazmin Cazares

Jazmin Cazares was born and raised in Uvalde, Texas and is pursuing an undergraduate degree in Psychology at Texas A&M Corpus Christi. After her little sister, Jackie, was killed in the Robb Elementary shooting in 2022, Jazmin became a gun violence prevention activist, organizing rallies, testifying before Congress and speaking publicly across America. In 2023 she was recognized as a Girls Leading Change Honoree by former First Lady Jill Biden and was her guest to the State of the Union in 2024. Jazmin is also the President of Jackie’s Loving Hands, a non-profit that raises funds for veterinary scholarships in memory of her sister, who wanted to be a veterinarian when she grew up.

Matt Puckett

Matt Puckett is a Grammy award-winning songwriter and guitarist, originally from Austin, TX. After years of touring and making records, he relocated to Brooklyn in 2017 and shifted towards a new career in public theology and social justice work. Matt graduated from Union Theological Seminary in 2022 and serves as Program Director at West End Collegiate Church on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. His music is available on streaming platforms and a new album, How’s Yr Heart?, is due later this year.

Photoville

For more information about Photoville visit, www.photoville.com

CatchLight

CatchLight is a San Francisco Bay Area-based non-profit that believes art is vital and the highest form of hope. They serve as a transformational force, supporting artists and creating programs that accelerate the social impact of visual storytelling to improve the world by informing how we see and understand each other.

In 2017, CatchLight launched its fellowship program, honoring three storytellers who demonstrated excellence in the use of photography and art as a catalyst to spark new conversations. Each fellow received an award of $30,000 and entered a partnership with an established media outlet to collaborate on a year-long project focused on driving social change.