Gregg Segal studied photography and film at California Institute of the Arts (BFA) dramatic writing at New York University (MFA) and education at The University of Southern California (MA).

Segal approaches his work with the sensibility of a sociologist – using the medium to explore culture – our identity, memory, behavior, roles, beliefs, and values. His photography utilizes stark contrast and juxtaposition to engage viewers and provoke reflection. He draws on his background in writing and film to make pictures that are single frame dramas with a sense of something that has or is about to happen.

Segal’s photography has been recognized by American Photography, Communication Arts, PDN, Investigative Reporters and Editors, The New York Press Club, the Society of Publication Designers and the Magnum Photography Awards. Segal’s portraiture and photo essays have been featured in Time, Newsweek, The Independent, Le Monde, Stern, Fortune, National Geographic Adventure and Wired, among others.

Sharon Miller is a Brooklyn-born award-winning hip hop artist, portrait photographer, visual artist, and creative educator from Queens, New York. Miller, professionally known in the entertainment industry as “Pri the Honeydark,” experienced many childhood adversities, including homelessness. It was through an introduction to the creative arts as a child that Miller began to realize her own possible greatness, and used the arts as a means to overcome her childhood obstacles. Her early introduction to the arts would later transform into a plethora of award-winning creative skills including photography, carpentry, visual and interior styling, scenery construction, music production and performance, as well as fine arts.

Understanding where she came from, Miller is a passionate believer in using her art for social change — with a heavy focus on creative youth within marginalized communities. She founded an independent organization called The Creative Youth Society where she teaches New York City community youth the skills that empower them to seek careers within creative industries. Miller also teaches visual arts within public school and non-profit sectors, and was recently named Sony Camera’s Sony Alpha Female 2021.

Nichole Washington uses photography, paint and design to create bold images that are an exploration of feminine strength, identity and spirituality. Her work centers divine characters that exist in an imagined space meant for healing and transformation. By combing her photography with paint she is able to blend the lines between real and fantasy, making space for nuanced personalities. She is inspired by powerful women, Orisha stories and personal challenges. 

Nichole’s work features unique symbols that are inspired by Egyptian hieroglyphs and Adinkra symbols from West Africa. Each of her symbols has unique meaning but they are meant to be reflected upon rather than defined. Nichole hopes to persuade viewers to look beyond the surface and have an introspective experience with the work. 

Alejandro Durán collects the international trash washing up on the Caribbean coast of Mexico and transforms it into aesthetic yet disquieting art works that wake us to the threat of plastic pollution. Through photography and installation, his long-term project “Washed Up: Transforming a Trashed Landscape” examines the fraught intersections of man and nature, revealing the pervasive impact of consumer culture on the natural world. “Washed Up” has been published in National Geographic, Time, and The Huffington Post as well as the books Art & Ecology Now, Unexpected Art and Photo Viz, among others.

Born in Mexico City in 1974, Alejandro is now based between Brooklyn, New York and Sian Ka’an, México, where he continues to gather trash for the project. He received an MA in Teaching from Tufts University and an MFA in poetry from the New School for Social Research. As an educator, Durán has taught youth and adult classes in photography and video at The Museum of Modern Art and The International Center of Photography. 

Tahir Karmali, artist and designer – born and raised in Nairobi, Kenya; based in Brooklyn, NY.

Tahir is primarily an investigator of materials and their underlying source – as currency, as markers of cultural identity, or as exploitable artifact. He is invested in transforming these materials into varying formats (sculptural installations, prints, textile works) that are deceptively beautiful  or attractive, as an art form, allowing the viewer to savor them as primary material before a layer of trauma (of migration, of displacement) reveals itself slowly.

His work is based not only on his own physical experience of moving between borders, and globally diverse cultures, but also on how certain elemental materials move through these same routes and are thus transformed per their use value in each space, including within the art world.

Makeba Rainey’s creative practice focuses on building community and what that looks like. For her, community is an extension of family. By centering her work around social justice, specifically in regard to Black Americans, community becomes the key to liberation. Her artwork taps into aspects of the Black community, merging the old with the new by re-envisioning the ancestors through new media and creating space for young creatives to build and sustain themselves. Although a lot of her work is local to Harlem, she creates bonds with the larger Black community through her web-based artist collective incorporating the themes of social justice movements like Black Lives Matter.

Originally from Harlem, New York, Makeba is a self-taught artist best known for her digital collage portraits of contemporary and historical Black icons. Makeba an internationally-exhibited artist, a 2017 Create Change Fellow with the Laundromat Project, a 2018 member of Vox Populi gallery in Philadelphia, a 2018 CFEVA Fellow, a 2018 Season III NARS resident Artist, and an Absolut Art artist.