On its 30th anniversary, Center, a nonprofit focused on sharing lens-based art, is looking to the future while reflecting on all it has already achieved.
No one takes the same picture of the same thing. Our reality isn’t always as shared as we think it is, yet no medium is asked to reveal truth quite like photography. Institutions like Center, Santa Fe’s only nonprofit devoted to bolstering lens-based, socially engaged work, have for the last thirty years taken an expansive view of photography and, in doing so, expanded our notions of truth. “Our biggest aspiration is… a world where everyone has the ability to represent themselves and tell their own stories,” says Laura Wzorek Pressley, executive director of Center.
Truth in photography isn’t an answer—it’s a set of questions: who is behind the lens? What is their truth? In the responses, there’s a story—something Pressley has seen function as transformative and empowering in programs like the flagship Review Santa Fe Symposium. Now approaching its 24th year, Review Santa Fe brings 100 photographers together with editors, publishers, and curators for in-depth critique. “Review Santa Fe is kind of like a visual storytelling campfire,” Pressley says, where artists share their projects—which are often deeply personal—with a community of care cultivated over many years.
And that’s just one of Center’s many initiatives. The nonprofit has a mentorship program and produces panel discussions, critical essays, and presentations. In the last three decades, it has distributed more than $600,000 of direct funding for photographic projects, and another $100,000 in professional development scholarships. In 2024, Center also began to build an online prototype for its archive in collaboration with scholars from the University of New Mexico’s Humanities Department. This digital catalogue documents diverse perspectives across the discipline on a publicly accessible platform, illuminating important shifts over the last two decades.
All of this was born out of a small group of photographers gathering informally to share their work in the mid ’90s. Thirty years later, Center is a worldwide constituency—and still just getting started. Pressley shared long-term aspirations to organize community classes and provide studio rental space, digital darkrooms, media rooms, and a photographic book research library. In the immediate future, to mark its 30th birthday, Center will host the opening of a new exhibition space and learning hub called Center Space. The facility will provide yet another touchpoint for community members and artists alike through photography and storytelling. Center Space opens on May 30, 2025, in Santa Fe.
Center’s myriad efforts provide avenues for reflection on the ways in which images organize knowledge and create aesthetic autonomy, profoundly shaping our experience of the world.
