Whitney Richardson is an intermediate photo editor at the New York Times. She is also a writer and producer for the New York Times’ photo blog, Lens. While working at the New York Times, Ms. Richardson helped to launch a redesign for the Lens website, as well as almost doubled the photo department’s social media traffic in her first year. This year, she served as a co-producer for the 2015 New York Portfolio Review, sponsored by the New York Times’ Lens blog and the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism.

Sheila Pree Bright is an award-winning fine-art photographer nationally known for her photographic series Young Americans, Plastic Bodies and Suburbia. Bright received national attention shortly after earning a M.F.A. in Photography from Georgia State University in 2003. She was awarded the Center Prize from the Santa Fe Center of Photography for Suburbia in 2006 and is a recent winner of the MOCA, GA Working Artist Project Grant 2014.

In the art world, Bright is described as a “social cultural anthropologist” portraying large-scale works that combine a wide-range of contemporary culture. Late 2013, she went viral on Huffington Post for her Plastic Bodies series, which was featured as a trending topic on the publication’s Art and Culture page. Plastic Bodies also appeared in an important documentary, Through the Lens Darkly, which explores the important role of black photographers. The indie art documentary premiered at Sundance film festival January 2014.

Bright’s most current work, 1960Now will premier at the Museum of Contemporary Art, GA September 25, 2015. 1960Now, is an evolution in Bright’s exploration through her lens of the Civil Rights movement. Thus far, this project has taken Bright to Atlanta, Selma 50th Anniversary, Baltimore, Ferguson and Washington D.C where she was on the ground documenting the Black Lives movement. The ultimate goal of 1960Now is to encourage the community to think critically and ignite a dialogue of current social issues between all generations.

Ruddy Roye is a Brooklyn based documentary photographer specializing in editorial and environmental portraits, and photo-journalism. The photographer, who has over fifteen years of experience, is inspired by the raw and gritty lives of grass-roots people, especially those of his homeland of Jamaica. Ruddy strives to tell the stories of their victories and ills by bringing their voices to social media and matte-fiber paper.

Ruddy has worked with magazines like the New York Times, Vogue, Jet, Ebony, ESPN, and Essence and has also worked with local newspapers like New York Newsday. Ruddy honed his skill as a photojournalist by working as an Associated Press stringer in New York covering journalism events. He is also known for his documentation of the dancehall scene all over the world. He has travelled to as far as Brazzaville in the Congo to document how Jamaicans and other dancers use the language of dance as a tool of activism.