Cleveland Photo Fest 2019

The Cleveland Photographic Workshop, a non profit corporation, announces the first annual Cleveland Photo Fest, opening September 1^st through October 30^th, 2019.

A citywide event, the CPF aims to strengthen the appreciation of photography as a major force in today’s visually driven culture.

Six photography exhibitions will open under Cleveland Photo Fest auspices. The CPF anticipates the initial participation of more than 30 galleries, art spaces, and organizations. The festival will feature photographer’s presentations, gallery and art space exhibitions and community-oriented educational events.

Cleveland Photo Fest Directors Laura D’Alessandro and Jim Szudy have been working with Cleveland Photographic Workshop director Herbert Ascherman since November of 2018 to organize and coordinate the Cleveland Photo Fest.  

To date we have the support of: the CAN Journal, Cool Cleveland, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Keep It Local Cleveland, numerous art spaces, businesses, and photographers.

We are now in the organizational stages of fundraising, populating the six exhibitions the CPF will sponsor directly, and involving the photo-interested community of the greater Cleveland area in the implementation of our programing.

According to Hubspot.com, 80% of marketers use visual assets in their social media marketing. Photography has become, needless to say, ubiquitous. Apple made 1.1 BILLION iPhones between 2007 and 2018. That’s BILLION, and they are just one of 36 international phone companies manufacturing over 185 different models of smart phones.  Every one of the hundreds of million phones produced annually has a built-in camera with direct links to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, to name just a few of the many available media platforms. Nowhere, however, does a manufacturer or content creator mention the art, let alone the craft, of picture taking. No one mentions the fact that photography has been recognized as a fine art for well over 100 years.

The Cleveland Photo Fest will uplift the human condition and enlighten Clevelanders with examples of the origin of photography’s classical roots, where photography is in the visual world of today, and an exciting look into the future of the newest fine art.

The genesis of the Cleveland Photo Fest came from CPF Director Laura D’Alessandro. Laura, a Clevelander then living in New Orleans, was an instrumental volunteer in the formative years for PHOTO NOLA: The New Orleans Annual Festival of Photography. Returning to the Greatest City in the Nation, she was poignantly conscious that Cleveland did not have a single, unifying, photo event.

Aware of the exigencies of a media - driven event, Laura enlisted the invaluable aid of media and digital savant (now CPF Co-Director) Jim Szudy.  After several preliminary conversations, Laura and Jim approached Herb Ascherman, former Board of Directors President of the Artist Archives of the Western Reserve, one of Cleveland’s three art museums. Together, this talented team quickly laid out the necessary organizational steps toward launching the First Annual Cleveland Photo Fest. Their mission is ‘to create an annual event that will involve photographers, photography supporters and other Cleveland based organizations that exhibit and promote photography as a fine art for a two-month period of continuous public exhibitions, educational programming and civic events.’

The CPF has six exhibitions under its direct auspices that will involve upwards of 100 local and regional, and a few international, photographers. Each exhibition will have a social, educational and civic component to which the public is a necessary participant. Gallery space in Lakewood, Cleveland Heights and Parma has been committed for CPF exhibitions. We anticipate that we will have an additional 30 partners who will sponsor photo related events throughout the Greater Cleveland area.