PCNW Faculty

Adair Freeman Rutledge is a photographic artist based in Seattle, WA. Originally from small town Alabama, her photography work often questions enduring traditions and underscores tensions between cultural practices and modern realities. Through a curious and feminist lens, she explores how American customs influence expectations for our youth, shape gender roles, and impact racial stereotypes. Adair’s photography has been commissioned by brands like Amazon, John Deere, Brooks Running, and Lands’ End. Her fine art work has been featured on NPR, Fraction Magazine, and Lenscratch, and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Seattle Art Museum’s 2019 Betty Bowen Award (finalist) and CENTER Santa Fe’s Editor’s Choice Award.

Anna Ream is a conceptual and documentary portrait photographer and a sculptor based in Issaquah, Washington. Her artistic practice is centered at the nexus of domestic life and motherhood, examining the social expectations of motherhood, adolescent identity, and the emotional complexity of childhood. Ream is a graduate of the Certificate Program at Photographic Center Northwest where she now serves as a board member. Her work has been exhibited nationally and featured on international websites including Lenscratch, TODAY.com, and The Daily Mail.

Annabel Clark is a documentary and portrait photographer who was born and raised in Topanga, California. She received her BFA in Photography from Parsons School of Design in 2003. During her final term at Parsons, she photographed her mother, the late actress Lynn Redgrave, during her treatment and initial recovery from breast cancer. In 2004, the project was published as a book and exhibition titled “Journal: A Mother and Daughter’s Recovery from Breast Cancer” by Umbrage Editions. She has worked on assignment for many publications including The New York Times, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, and People Magazine. Her work has been exhibited at the Minnesota Center for Photography, Michael Mazzeo Gallery and the Southeast Museum of Photography as well as at hospitals and medical schools across the country.

Brian Allen has been working in and around documentary photography for 50 years. His recent assignments involve photographing buildings and structures for the Historic American Building Survey or the Historic American Engineering Record (HABS/HAER), using a 4×5 camera and B&W film. He also documents architecture and artifacts using digital cameras and professional lighting equipment. His personal work includes a more playful exploration of the edges of the documentary tradition. Some of these photographs are in the collections of the Museum of the North at the University of Alaska, the Alaska State Museum, and the Anchorage Museum. In addition to teaching at PCNW for many years, Brian has taught at the main campuses of the University of Alaska and the University of Washington. He graduated cum laude from Harvard College in 1976, and earned a Masters in Studio Art from the International Center of Photography/New York University in 1989.

Chloe Collyer (they/them/Chloe) is a documentary photographer, photo educator, and 5th-gen Seattleite whose work is deeply connected to the history and marginalized communities of the PNW. This photographer’s work focuses on the intersections of race, art, and LGBTQI culture and for 10 years Chloe has photographed the Black Lives Matter movement and many other social justice causes. Chloe’s most recent project documenting youth activism will be published soon.

An alumni of Youth in Focus, PCNW, and Seattle Central’s Commercial Photography Program, Chloe has spent more than 15 years behind the camera, working as a photojournalist, events photographer, sports photographer, photo editor and camera technician. [If you recognize Chloe it may be because you visited CameraTechs during the Chloe years.]

For the past decade Chloe has taught photography to students of all ages, mostly working with youth 10-18 years old.

Daniel Gregory spent way too many years working in high tech. He now works as a fine art photographer and photographic educator based on Whidbey Island, Washington.

He is Adobe® certified in Adobe® CC® Lightroom and Photoshop and is an instructor at Photoshop World, Creative Live and other national and regional conferences. In addition, Daniel is a member of the core faculty at the Photographic Center Northwest where he teaches classes on a variety of film, digital and conceptual photographic concepts.

Daniel works in a variety of photographic mediums often working in both analog and digital technologies. Much of his personal work focuses on the relationship of time, landscape, emotion and the impacts on identity. He is the host of the podcast The Perceptive Photographer which focuses on the creative life and challenges that artist and photographers face.

Dan Hawkins (b. 1974, San Jose, CA) is a Seattle based photographer who uses a wide variety of obsolete and invented imaging processes to create his work. The processing of film inside the development chamber is a sensitive and extremely controlled process. By incorporating the waters and/or other materials from the site in order to disturb the refined development process his work allows the location to further influence the photograph. He is currently working on a body of photographs related to the Duwamish River.

Elizabeth A. Brown is an independent scholar, educator, and consultant specializing in contemporary art and the history of photography. From 2000-2011 she was Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions & Collections at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, following positions at the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, and the University Art Museum, UC Santa Barbara. She has curated over 50 exhibitions, including mid-career surveys of Kiki Smith (photographic work) and Lari Pittman (drawings), WOW (The Work of the Work), which explored how contemporary art affects the viewer; and 150 Works of Art, an innovative display of the Henry’s permanent collection. Brown earned her B.A. from the University of Michigan and M.A., M. Phil., and Ph.D. degrees, all in the history of art, from Columbia University in New York. She currently teaches at the Photographic Center Northwest, Cornish College of the Arts, and Seattle University.

Eirik Johnson is a photographic artist based in Seattle, WA. His work has been exhibited at spaces including the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and the Aperture Foundation in New York. He has received awards including a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in 2009, the Santa Fe Prize in 2005, and a William J. Fulbright Grant to Peru in 2000. Johnson’s work is in the collections of institutions including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Seattle Art Museum, and the George Eastman House. Books by Johnson include Sawdust Mountain (Aperture, 2009), Borderlands (Twin Palms Press, 2005), and Snow Star (Cavallo Point Press, 2009). His editorial work has appeared in numerous magazines including Dwell, Metropolis, the New York Times T Magazine, and the Wall Street Journal.

Gina White has been a photographer for over ten years, working as a freelance entertainment photographer, fine art photographer and as faculty at Photographic Center Northwest. Her work has been published in Men’s Health magazine, The Seattle Times and The Stranger. Gina recently was the teaching assistant in master printer Dr. Tim Rudman’s 5-day lith printing workshop. She has exhibited at Photographic Center Northwest and Studio Siena in Pioneer Square.

Hanita Schwartz’s work spans sculpture, photography and video. In her work, she explores varying points of her views of banal everyday objects, dwells on the potential to change their hereditary assumptions and meanings. Her work has been represented internationally and locally. She was born and raised in Tel-Aviv and moved to Seattle from Israel in 2000. Hanita got her B.ed degree in fine arts and art education from Hamidrasha College of fine arts in Israel, and her MFA from the University of Washington.

I grew up on the Kitsap Peninsula in a home where photography was esteemed. (my father and grandmother were both serious amateurs) I left home after high school graduation got two
BAs and moved to NYC in 1980. There I worked as a free lance photographer. renovated a house in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, received an MFA in photography from Pratt Institute, got married and had a child. NYC was good to me, I taught at ICP and had a variety of jobs shooting everything from the most beautiful spots in Brooklyn (for a magazine) to grip and grins to opera costumes. I left NYC in 1991, moved back to Washington and became a high school teacher of photography for 24 years. These days, I have retired from teaching and am a full time pinhole photographer.

I also founded and direct thepinholeproject.org in 2013. Now over 4000 people have done long exposure pinhole photographs with me.

Jenny Riffle graduated from Bard College in 2001 with a BA in Photography; she received her MFA at the School of Visual Arts in 2011. Riffle works with narrative portraiture and landscapes that explore the psychological essence of a person or place. Her photographs have been exhibited internationally and she has been featured in, and photographed for, numerous publications worldwide. A book of her collaborative self portraits It’s Raining… I Love You was published in 2020 by Minor Matters Books and her monograph Scavenger: Adventures in Treasure Hunting was published by Zatara Press in 2015. Riffle’s awards include Artist Trust’s GAP, FotoFilmic’s BMNF Award, The Pilkington Prize, PDN’s 30, and the Aaron Siskind Foundation Grant. Riffle lives in Seattle, where in addition to her art practice and editorial work she teaches at Photographic Center Northwest.

Laura Hart Newlon is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in photography, writing and sculpture. Newlon has recently exhibited work at SOIL (Seattle), Triumph (Chicago), Los Angeles Center for Digital Art (LA), Roots & Culture (Chicago), the Baltimore Art Fair (Baltimore) and LVL3 (Chicago), and has been awarded residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, The Wassaic Project, and ACRE. She completed her MFA in Photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2013, and an MA in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Washington in 2010. Newlon lives in Seattle where she is an Associate Professor in the Art Department at Cornish College of the Arts.

Hi, I’m Lesley: a scientist, engineer, photographer, dog lover, kayaker, and Washingtonian. My passion for photography was sparked in high school and college, which grew deeper while traveling around the world documenting my adventure with my 25-year-old 35mm camera. This culminated in a Certificate in 2018 from Photographic Center Northwest in Seattle, Washington. One of the things I love about photography is that it allows me to utilize my science background to achieve what I want in my images. I love the varied textures found in all sorts of items: tree bark, cacti, old machines, and the aging pipes and wiring in the basement of my mid-century house. I am keenly interested in showing off the beauty in all things, especially things that most people would just walk on by and not notice (or pass off as ugly). I predominately shoot locally in Seattle and the surrounding areas. I have a dog named Kevin Bacon who patiently waits outside my photography studio while I work.

Hailing from Vancouver, WA, Macsen spent most of his educational career studying analog photographic processes, eventually graduating from The Evergreen State College with a Bachelor of Arts in Photography. After a sojourn in Los Angeles working at a fine art photo lab, Macsen returned to the northwest to live in Seattle where he joined PCNW in 2020.

Melinda Hurst Frye is a Seattle-based artist and educator. By way of observation, experimentation, and slow investigation, her practice centers on themes of ecology and place in her photographs of the Pacific Northwest landscape. She holds an MFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design and a BFA from Pacific Northwest College of Art. Hurst Frye’s work has been featured on Humble Arts Foundation, Lenscratch, and WIRED Photo and regularly exhibits. She is represented by J. Rinehart Gallery.

Natalie Krick (b. 1986 Portland Oregon) is a Seattle based artist whose work investigates visual perception and pleasure through complicating the act of looking. She holds a BFA from the School of Visual Arts and an MFA from Columbia College Chicago. In 2015 Krick was a recipient of an Individual Photographer’s Fellowship from the Aaron Siskind Foundation for her project Natural Deceptions. In 2017 Natural Deceptions was published by Skylark Editions and Krick was awarded the Aperture Portfolio Prize. Krick’s work has recently been exhibited at SF Camerawork, The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Aperture Foundation, The Museum of Sex, and Blue Sky Gallery. Her photographs has been highlighted in several international publications including BOMB, The New Yorker, Vogue Italia, PDN, Aperture, and Vrij Nederland.

Rachel Demy (b. 1982, San Diego, CA) is a documentary and fine art photographer based in Seattle, Washington. She received her Bachelor of Arts in political science from the University of Portland in 2004. For the following 15 years, she worked for a concert promoter, a booking agent, and finally settled as a tour manager for rock bands, where she honed her skills as a portrait and documentary music photographer. Demy completed her Certificate in Fine Art Photography from Photographic Center Northwest in 2022. Her first photography book, Between, Everywhere —documenting life on tour with Death Cab for Cutie — was released in December 2022 through Minor Matters, with a concurrent exhibition at Leica Bellevue. In her spare time, Demy enjoys long-distance running, travel, spelunking on Wikipedia, night walks, and taking down oysters by the dozen.

In 2022 Rosanne celebrates 40 years as a professional photographer. During those years she has won many awards for her commercial and fine art work. She has also been featured in well-known publications such as Communication Arts and Graphis, among others. In 2008 Rosanne authored a book about women and body image titled This is Who I Am—our beauty in all shapes and sizes. She has also published books about portraiture (The Art of the Portrait) and lighting (ABCs of Beautiful Light). Rosanne has been teaching lighting, portraiture and creativity classes over the course of her career at PCNW, Santa Fe Workshops and many other venues. She occasionally mentors students who want to hone their skills in the art of photography. Rosanne is also a poet and singer-songwriter.

Tegra Stone Nuess is an editorial and commercial photographer, specializing in travel and adventure. Her commitment is to capture authentic emotions and moments while crafting and creating images and videos that tell a story. Tegra’s work documents the wonder and drama of the wild outdoors and our interaction with it. Her photograph of a hiker in the North Cascades National Park was the top-selling Getty image of 2016 under the search term “woman.” She is also passionate about capturing the daily details that make life wonderful. From portraiture and lifestyle to food and restaurants, Tegra documents and celebrates who we are and how we live. Some of her favorite clients have been The New York Times, Backpacker Magazine, Saveur Magazine, Booking.com, UnCruise Adventures, and The Trust for Public Land.

Zorn Taylor is a portrait photographer, photographing humans and documenting community. Taylor makes portraits that build community by celebrating the stories of the human beings that comprise it. As an artist, Taylor’s attention is focused on how community is created and nurtured and grown. Taylor’s work describes a beautiful, expanding community and imagines how it could become even richer. Taylor is a believer in the beloved community and imagines a community that manifests through the actions we take to love, the words we use to describe that love and the narratives we weave about these relationships.