ANMPAS 2024 Judges

The Annual New Mexico Photographic Art Show is New Mexico's best color photography exhibition.

We usually receive over 200 entries from over 100 artists.

With this type of turn out we need qualified experts to judge such a field.

This years judges are:

Monica Cioffi

Photography allows me to capture and preserve a moment that is immortalized. The feeling expressed in a photograph transforms it from a two-dimensional image to something very alive in my soul. My images seek to capture interaction, between the elements and forces of nature or between animals or people. These interactions are what makes us “alive”.

Initially, I picked up a camera when I was 12 as a way to engage with the world around me despite my incredible shyness. What grew out of documenting family events and capturing animal images developed into a passion for capturing moments, textures, lines, color, and interactions.

It has been an honor to share my images in various juried exhibitions. I have received awards in the Insight All Women’s show, ANMPAS, Shades of Gray, the New Mexico State Fair, and the Enchanted Lens Camera Club. Additionally, my images have been accepted into Color it Red, the Exposure Award Show at the Louvre, an international show in Barcelona, and the Woman Made Gallery in Chicago. I have also served on the Mentorship and Judges’ committees for the Enchanted Lens Camera Club

monicacioff.zenfolio.com

Jim Shepka

I picked up the photo bug from my father who carried a camera with him while serving as a Marine in the pacific campaign of World War II. When I went into the Marine Corps in the mid-70’s, I too carried a small instamatic camera with me and took pictures as a hobby. Years later I had the opportunity to join a company that supported Kodak, Fuji and Agfa in the film processing side of the business and traveled extensively to work on commercial film processing equipment. During a trade show in the early 90’s held in London, Kodak first introduced the digital sensor and the industry laughed at that thought of it. Well, we all know what happened next and it wasn’t long before the film industry collapsed and the digital world came to light. Although I worked behind the scenes of the film side I was literally exposed to some fantastic work being done in the pro film world. I never felt compelled to jump behind a camera, at least until the digital world matured.

I opened a studio on the east coast and ran a photo club of 250 members until I retired in 2020 and relocated to New Mexico. The film industry here came a calling and I was fortunate to again work behind the scenes but this time as a on-set stills photographer for the movie and tv commercial aspect of that business. In addition, I was recently recognized for my image Hard Days Ride in the 2023 New Mexico Magazine photo contest that took 1st place in the New Mexico Experience category, as well as Judges Choice Award at the 2022 ANMPAS Color Awards. My work has also been featured in Cowboy and Indians Magazine, the International Color Awards, The Societies of International Travel and Leisure, Yankee Magazine , The Boston Red Sox Foundation and the Maine Windjammers Association, just to name a few.

I am also a firm believer that any photographer can benefit from joining a photo club or aligning with a mentor to help guide them to the next level on their photographic journey. And let’s face it, there is no mystery in pointing your cell phone skyward and pressing the “click’ button to capture the “I was there moment” for their social needs and for some, that is more than enough to suit their photo needs. After all, cameras are just tools and like any tool of tradesperson – there is no such thing as the one perfect tool for every project.

I am a Marine Veteran and cancer survivor, so my comfort zone may be a few bars higher than most, but I don’t take that for granted. After all, you never know how strong you are, until being strong is your only option.

Wendy Kappy

I am a photographer living and working in Albuquerque, NM. My work is primarily abstract and macro/close-up. Fascinated with the ordinary, I find my photographic subjects all around me—flora and other forms of nature, water and ice, glass, and light. We live in a gorgeous world rich in imagery. As a photographer, I am grateful to be able to photograph and interpret these beauties of nature and life.

A major part of my photographic work, however, focuses on subjects of less expected, but abundant, beauty. I find these subjects in salvage yards, junkyards, and railyards, as well as in streets, gutters, sidewalks, parking lots, dumpsters, and alleyways. These are rich sources for the abstract photographer with an eye out for great color, form, line, marks, and texture.

I find it poignant that the more disfigured surfaces are—the more broken, decayed, rotted, defaced, gouged, scratched, splattered, buffed, burnt, and rusted—the lovelier and more interesting they become. For me, finding beauty, meaning, and dreamlike imagery in decay and ruin created by human action and the forces of nature is unexpected and redemptive. I am reminded that beauty can exist almost anywhere.

Having worked in metal, glass, clay, and fiber, art has always been a part of my life. I came to photography as a young adult, but it has been my passion and primary artistic focus for the past 18 years. Influenced by painters and sculptors, my work leans more towards painting and graphic arts than traditional photography. This is done in-camera with minimal post-processing. While some of my work is purely abstract focusing on form and the elements of design, other images are more interpretive, evoking stories and recognizable imagery from our waking or sleeping life.

I have been showing my photography in juried exhibitions since 2011: ANMPAS, InSight Women’s Show, Color It Red, Image New Mexico, PhotoPlace Gallery, and the New York Center for Photographic Art. My work was the featured portfolio and cover in the Sept/Oct 2021 edition of Shadow & Light Magazine. In autumn 2023, five of my images were published in Hintology Magazine, an international abstract photography and literary magazine.

I was a member of the Enchanted Lens Camera Club for ten years and served as the Mentorship Committee co-chair and Casual Critique co-host for a number of those years. I am currently active with Photo Salon de New Mexico and Abstract Photographers International.

Website: wendykappyphotography.com

Instagram: wendykappyphoto