About Us – PhotoWork Foundation

Our Mission

The PhotoWork Foundation supports the development and education of post-documentary photographic artists and cultivates an audience for their work. Through a diverse program of outreach to individual artists and those who will be enriched by the results of their sustained efforts, the Foundation seeks to empower an aspect of photography that is most often not commercially viable but is essential to the collective understanding of what it looks like to be living in society today.

Who We Are

Sasha Wolf

Founder, Executive Director & Board Member of PhotoWork Foundation; Host & Executive Producer of PhotoWork Podcast

After running the New York photography gallery, Sasha Wolf Gallery, for 10 years, Sasha transitioned to a private/pop-up model in 2017. Sasha represents 16 photographic artists, working to place their prints in museum and university collections, private and corporate collections and in individual homes.

Sasha advises and collaborates with her artists on book projects, grant proposals and career goals. Sasha also works with an extended group of artists as a book and project editor and on other professional practices. Sasha reviews and judges work for leading art institutions, universities and fairs numerous times a year and lectures and conducts artist’s workshops around the country on professional practices and project development. Sasha’s book, PhotoWork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice, was published by Aperture in the Fall of 2019. Prior to her work in the fine art photography world, Sasha was a writer, director and producer in the film and television industries and an award winning short filmmaker. Her last short film, Joe, was nominated for the Palme d’Or du court métrage at Cannes and has screened all over the world.

Michael Chovan-Dalton

Producer of PhotoWork Podcast

Michael Chovan-Dalton is the producer of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf and the host of Real Photo Show. He is a professor and coordinator of Photography at Mercer County Community College in New Jersey and the former Director of the JKC Gallery in Trenton NJ.

He is also a photographer, an occasional juror in New York and New Jersey, and he collaborates on many photographic projects and shows with other artists and curators. Chovan-Dalton received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts and his MFA from Columbia University.

Taylor Selsback

Assistant Director of PhotoWork Foundation; Associate Producer of PhotoWork Podcast

Taylor Selsback, a photographer and linguist from Minneapolis, MN, finds his calling at the intersection of visual storytelling and arts advocacy through his role at the PhotoWork Foundation. With a diverse background spanning non-profit work, education, and photography, Taylor is deeply committed to fostering new pathways for artists to flourish beyond conventional methods.

His journey into the world of photography stems from a profound fascination with the interplay between visual and verbal language. Through his personal work, Taylor endeavors to unravel the intricate connections between these elements.

Foundation History

Founded in 2022 by Executive Director, Sasha Wolf, the PhotoWork Foundation evolved out of Sasha’s twenty-year history as a photography gallerist, educator, and advocate. A teacher to artists and audiences alike, Wolf has lectured and participated in reviews and symposia around the world promoting a diverse group of established and emerging photographic artists.

Sasha’s acclaimed book PhotoWork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice (Aperture, 2019) brings the insights and working methods of contemporary photography’s most distinguished artists to a larger audience of photographers and photo enthusiasts. During the first few months of the pandemic Sasha had the idea to expand on the book through a series of conversations with some of her photographer friends and colleagues. This germ of an idea became what is now the much loved PhotoWork Podcast.

With the help of producer, Michael Chovan-Dalton, PhotoWork the podcast, was born in the early months of 2020 bringing together an eclectic mix of photographers, curators, collectors, designers, and artists to share in conversation their unique stories, histories, processes, and practices in what has ultimately been dubbed the “Talky, Touchy, Feely” version of the book. Now in its third season, Sasha continues her conversations with photographers and industry change makers about working and living as artists and photographic enthusiasts today. The PhotoWork book and podcast have become invaluable mentoring tools for artistic inspiration, teaching, and a lifeline to sustaining community beyond the commercial photography world.

After years of planning, the PhotoWork Foundation brings together Sasha’s prominent history in the photography community, expanding upon previous mentoring efforts to create educational and developmental opportunities, such as the PhotoWork Fellowship, for emerging artists working in the post-documentary tradition, broadening the impact they have and connecting them with a wider appreciative audience.

Board of Directors

Sasha Wolf

Founder, Executive Director & Board Member

After running the New York photography gallery, Sasha Wolf Gallery, for 10 years, Sasha transitioned to a private/pop-up model in 2017. Sasha represents 16 photographic artists, working to place their prints in museum and university collections, private and corporate collections and in individual homes.

Sasha advises and collaborates with her artists on book projects, grant proposals and career goals. Sasha also works with an extended group of artists as a book and project editor and on other professional practices. Sasha reviews and judges work for leading art institutions, universities and fairs numerous times a year and lectures and conducts artist’s workshops around the country on professional practices and project development. Sasha’s book, PhotoWork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice, was published by Aperture in the Fall of 2019. Prior to her work in the fine art photography world, Sasha was a writer, director and producer in the film and television industries and an award winning short filmmaker. Her last short film, Joe, was nominated for the Palme d’Or du court métrage at Cannes and has screened all over the world.

Peter Kayafas

Chairman of the Board

Peter Kayafas is a photographer, publisher, curator and teacher who lives in New York City where he is the Director of the Eakins Press Foundation.

He is a Guggenheim Fellow (2019), and his photographs have been widely exhibited, and are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art; the Brooklyn Museum of Art; The New York Public Library; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the New Orleans Museum of Art; and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others. He is Co-Chair of the Board of Directors of the Corporation of Yaddo and he has taught photography at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn for 21 years. He has published five monographs of his photographs—The Merry Cemetery of Sapanta (2007); O Public Road! Photographs of America (2009); Totems (2012); The Way West (2020); and Coney Island Waterdance (2021).

Jeffrey A. Horwitz

Board Member at Large

Jeffrey A. Horwitz is a senior partner in Proskauer’s Corporate Department where he co-heads the Private Equity Real Estate practice and runs its internationally recognized Hospitality, Gaming & Leisure Group.

He has also served as co-head of Mergers & Acquisitions and as a member of the firm’s Executive Committee. As a general corporate and securities lawyer with broad-based experience in mergers and acquisitions, cross-border transactions, and long-term joint ventures, Jeff is regularly engaged to advise boards, management teams and investors on strategic matters, from litigation to personnel to transactions. As a senior member of Proskauer’s Entertainment Group, Jeff has represented a wide range of creators and creative ventures, including The Leonard Bernstein Office, The George Balanchine Trusts, The Broadway League, the Tony Awards®, and TSG Entertainment. He has long been involved as advisor to and board member of not-for-profit organizations, especially those devoted to arts and education. He is a former Chair of LAByrinth Theater Company and a co-Founder of The American Playwriting Foundation, and currently Chairs the board of Building for the Arts, which includes Theater Row, Music & The Brain and The Relentless Awards. He also serves on the board of StreetSquash.

Thomas Dunn

Board Member at Large

Tom is the retired CEO of New Holland Capital having spent his entire career in the investment management businesses.

A lifelong photography enthusiast, Tom serves on the MoMA Photo Committee and has supported numerous photography institutions and projects. Among other philanthropic activities, Tom is a trustee of the University of Chicago. Tom and his wife Susan live in NYC.

Advisory Committee

Jess T. Dugan

Jess T. Dugan is an artist whose work explores issues of identity through photography, video, and writing. Dugan’s work has been widely exhibited and is in the permanent collections of over 50 museums throughout the United States.

Dugan’s monographs include Look at me like you love me (MACK, 2022), To Survive on This Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults (Kehrer Verlag, 2018) and Every Breath We Drew (Daylight Books, 2015).

Lynne Echenberg

Lynne Echenberg is the Director of Restorative Justice Programs at the New York Peace Institute.

Lynne comes to NYPI with over 20 years of experience in program design and operations, advocacy and strategic planning in the child welfare, juvenile justice and youth development fields. She has worked at the Administration for Children’s Services, the Juvenile Rights Division of the Legal Aid Society, the Children’s Aid Society (CAS), Covenant House International and Good Shepherd Services, with a focus on building the highest quality programming and supports for young people in the foster care, juvenile & criminal justice, and youth homeless systems. At CAS, Lynne designed and launched the Next Generation Center, a one-stop multi-service center for young people in the Morrisania section of the Bronx that used Restorative Practices to build community and repair harm to that community. Since learning about Restorative Practices over a decade ago, Lynne has sought to integrate them whenever possible into all her work. Lynne received her Bachelor’s degree from Harvard College and her Juris Doctor from Stanford Law School.

Rahim Fortune

Rahim Fortune was raised in Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma. His documentary photo practice focuses on culture, geography and self expression in the American landscape.

He currently lives and works between Austin Texas and Brooklyn NY.His first book, I can’t stand to see you cry, is an exploration of Texas and the surrounding states, as well as the people who are fixed within its complex landscape. Fortune analyses relationships between family, friends and strangers, all caught in a flood of health and environmental issues while working to maintain grace. The artist uses his own personal experiences to explore the friction between public and private life, and the unspoken tensions in daily life through an approach rooted in the landscape. Moreover, Fortune’s biographical approach to photography attempts to unpack his own identity and experience in the midst of a pandemic, civil unrest, a cross-country move, a career, and the loss of a parent, thinking about both the future and past. The book was nominated for the Paris Photo-Aperture Photobook of the Year and was listed as one of the Museum of Modern Art’s favorite photobooks of 2021. He is the recipient of the 2022 Louis Roederer Discovery Award at Les Recncontres d’Arles.

William M. Goodman

William M. Goodman was one of the most well known criminal defense lawyers in the country.

He argued many appeals before the California Supreme Court and federal and state appellate courts throughout the country, and has been counsel of record in significant criminal and civil proceedings, as reflected by the more than 50 published opinions in his cases, which have been frequently cited in subsequent published opinions, treatises and articles. Goodman is now retired and living in Berkeley, California. He began collecting photography in the early 1970s and has accumulated an important collection of 20th and 21st century photographic work. He and his wife founded and funded the Tosa Studio Award which gave monetary grants and studio space to emerging artists in the San Francisco Bay Area. In March of 2019 The Berkeley Art Museum opened the exhibition, Unlimited: Recent Gifts from the William Goodman and Victoria Belco Photography Collection made possible by a large donation of 20^th and 21^st century prints to the museum by Goodman and his wife.

Gillian Laub

Gillian Laub is a photographer and filmmaker based in New York. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a degree in comparative literature before studying photography at the International Center of Photography, where her love of visual storytelling and family narratives began.

Laub’s first monograph, Testimony (Aperture 2007), began as a response to the media coverage during the second intifada in the Middle East. This work is comprised of portraits and testimonies from Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs, Lebanese, and Palestinians all directly and indirectly affected by the conflict. Laub spent over a decade working in Georgia exploring issues of lingering racism in the American South. This work became Laub’s first feature length, directed and produced, documentary film, Southern Rites that premiered on HBO. Her monograph, Southern Rites (Damiani, 2015) and traveling exhibition by the same title came out in conjunction with the film and are being used for an educational outreach campaign, in schools and institutions across the country. Southern Rites was named one of the best photo books by TIME, Smithsonian, Vogue, LensCulture, and American Photo. It was also nominated for a Lucie award and Humanitas award. Gillian’s most recent monograph Family Matters (Aperture), spanning over twenty years of photographs, explores how society’s biggest questions are revealed in our most intimate relationships; zeroing in on the artist family as an example of the way Donald Trump’s knack for sowing discord and division had impacted communities, individuals, and households across the country. An exhibition of Family Matters opened at the International Center of Photography in conjunction with the publication. Laub recently received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and was honored as a NYSCA/NYFA Photography Fellow in 2019.

Lesley A. Martin

Lesley A. Martin, is Executive Director of Printed Matter Inc. and former Creative Director of Aperture Foundation. Martin has edited more than one hundred books.

Including: On the Beach by Richard Misrach (2007); Illuminance by Rinko Kawauchi (2011, reissue 2021); LaToya Ruby Frazier: The Notion of Family (2014); Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness (2017); The New Black Vanguard by Antwaun Sargent (2019); and Sara Cwynar: Glass Life (2021). She was commissioning editor of The Chinese Photobook (2015); a contributing editor to Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and ’70s (2009) and The Latin American Photobook (2011); and curator of The Ubiquitous Image (2008), The New York Times Magazine Photographs (with Kathy Ryan, 2011), and Mickalene Thomas: Muse (2016). Lesley’s writing has been published in IMA magazine, FOAM, and Aperture. In 2012, she cofounded the Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards and, in 2020, she received the Royal Photographic Society Award for outstanding achievement in photographic publishing. Lesley is currently a visiting critic at Yale School of Art, New Haven, Connecticut.

Susannah Page

Susannah Page began her career working for several Broadway producers as well as at the Off-Broadway theater New York Theatre Workshop. She is the co-founder of Loco-Motion Dance Theatre for Children where she has served as the Managing Director since its inception in 1994.

She also works as a consultant with the independent theater production company Kelpie Arts (currently represented on Broadway by Book of Mormon and Hangmen), photographer Rosalind Solomon, and with the multi-media artists Maureen Connor and Toni Dove.

Matthew Pillsbury

Chair of the Advisory Committee

Matthew Pillsbury specializes in long-exposure photographs made only with available light. Across several series and in many cities, he has focused on the passage of time and people within spaces both public and private.

Pillsbury’s work is part of more than twenty-five permanent collections throughout the US, Canada and Europe, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Musée du Louvre in Paris, France; and the Tate Modern in London, England. His monographs include City Stages (Aperture, 2013) and Time Frame (Actes Sud, 2007) and he is the recipient of the 2014 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and the 2007 Fondation HSBC prix pour la Photographie. He currently resides in Brooklyn.