Meet our 2025 Jurors
is an independent photo and photobook editor, writer, picture researcher, and consultant based in Austin, Texas. She loves helping photographers craft powerful, cohesive edits of their work and work with them editing and sequencing zines and photobooks for publication. She is also Art Editor at the Oxford American magazine.
For 20+ years, Alyssa worked with Harper’s Magazine—most recently as Deputy Art Director—and continues to freelance for them. She has worked as a senior photo editor for National Geographic; picture researcher for publishing companies, sourcing images for publication on ficBon and non-ficBon book covers; and was the Archival Producer for PBS NewsHour’s Emmy-nominated interview series, Brief But Spectacular, sourcing creative and sensitive visual accompaniment for segments featuring a wide variety of guests. Several artists she pitched as guests on the show were featured in episodes. Recently, she has interviewed artists for feature articles published in print and online by Oxford American. Alyssa loves speaking to undergraduate and graduate photography students about their potential career paths; and enjoys the intensity of teaching day-long photo editing workshops.
Shana Lopes
Assistant Curator of Photography at SFMOMA San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Shana Lopes, PhD, is an Assistant Curator of Photography at SFMOMA. Born and raised in San Francisco, she earned her doctorate in art history from Rutgers University, specializing in the history of photography. Over the past sixteen years, she has gained curatorial experience at the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. She has recently curated or co-curated exhibitions, including:
Around Group f.64, Constellations: Photographs in Dialogue, Sightlines: Photographs from the Collection, Sea Change, A Living for Us All: Artists and the WPA, 2024 SECA Art Award, and Zanele Muholi: Eye Me. She is currently working on the upcoming exhibition Alejandro Cartagena: Ground Rules, which will be accompanied by a book from Aperture. Her writing has appeared in History of Photography, Art Journal, and 1000 Words.