Portfolio Submissions
Traveling Exhibitions
The Nagasaki Journey Archive
The Lou Stoumen Archive

Portfolio Submission

The Museum of Photographic Arts strives to maintain a dialogue with contemporary artists, and engage with new ideas and work being created in the photographic medium. We frequently receive unsolicited artist submissions, and ask that all submissions follow the guidelines below:

1) To submit work for review, please visit the Museum, or review our past exhibitions to assess whether your work is appropriate for our programming. Unfortunately, due to the number of portfolio submissions we receive, we are unable to respond individually to each artist.

2) Portfolios can be submitted by email to curate@mopa.org or direct mail to the address below. Acceptable submissions include: website address; CD, DVD or print portfolio; printed materials, such as press reviews, exhibition catalogs, or print on demand books.

3) Please include a resumé, short statement, and other supporting materials with any submission.

4) If materials require return, please include postage and appropriate packaging. Submissions sent without return postage are considered property of the Museum, and will be held or disposed of at will.

5) We ask that all submitted materials be no larger than 8.5 x 11 inches.

If your work is of interest to MoPA, or if we wish to retain your materials for future reference, you will be notified directly.

Printed materials should be sent to:

Museum of Photographic Arts
Attn: Curatorial Department 1649 El Prado
San Diego, CA 92101

Traveling Exhibitions

The Museum of Photographic Arts Traveling Exhibition Program is an integral part of our mission and an important component to expanding our institutional reach. In 1986 MoPA generated its first traveling exhibition: Arnold Newman: Five Decades. Since that time we have sent important exhibitions to museums around the world, including Revelaciones: The Art of Manuel Alvarez Bravo, The Duane Michals Show, Abelardo Morell and The Camera Eye, The Model Wife, and First Photographs: William Henry Fox Talbot and the Birth of Photography, among others. These and other exhibitions have represented MoPA worldwide and fundamentally expanded the scope of our audience. Our traveling exhibitions been exhibited in numerous institutions, including The Chicago Art Institute, The Smithsonian, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. They have been seen in Tokyo, Barcelona, Paris, London, Oxford, Amsterdam, Lausanne, and other international destinations, including ten cities in Mexico.

Traveling exhibitions offer MoPA the opportunity to display our curated exhibitions to museums outside the San Diego region. They allow groundbreaking photography to reach diverse populations, while promoting the name and recognition of MoPA to new audiences.

IPlease note that our Executive Director, Deborah Klochko and our Director of Exhibitions and Design, Scott B. Davis are available for lectures on a wide range of historic and contemporary issues in photography.

For more information on traveling exhibitions please contact the Director of Exhibitions and Design or 619.238.7559 ext. 214.

The Lou Stoumen Archive

The Lou Stoumen Fund established an endowed gift to be given through the Museum to a mid-career photographer whose work related in spirit to his own humanistic style of photography.  The prize was designated by Stoumen to be large enough to make a substantial difference in an artist's life and work. To date, the Lou Stoumen Award has been presented to Debbie Fleming Caffery (1996), Kenro Izu (1999), James Nachtwey (2002), and Gary Schneider (2006). The 2009 Stoumen Award will be presented to Mikhael Subotzky at the Exhibition Opening Reception on February 6, 2009.

Debbie Fleming Caffery, Untouchables, 2004	Kenro Izu, Druk #129. Do Chu La Pass, Thimphu, Bhutan, 2003	James Nachtwey, Iraq, 2003

Gary Schneider, Vince, 2001	Mikhael Subotzky, Pollsmoor Maximum Security Prison, Cape Town, South Africa, 2005

The Stoumen Archive is available for study to students of photography or film in the Museum of Photographic Arts Library. MoPA is honored by the long-term trust Stoumen vested in the museum. A traveling exhibition of his work is available for loan to accredited museums worldwide. Contact the curatorial department or the library for information and a prospectus.

The Nagasaki Journey Archive

The collection of 119 photographs by Yosuke Yamahata taken on August 10, 1945 is the most comprehensive record of the effects of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki. Taken in one day, the photographs record the aftermath of the bomb blast on Nagasaki, the survivors, and the victims. Nagasaki Journey opened in three cities simultaneously in the summer of 1995 to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Yosuke Yamahata (Japanese 1917 – 1966), Untitled. Nagasaki Bridge, August 10, 1945, gelatin silver print, collection MoPA. Shogo Yamahat and courtesy the Independent Documentary Group.

The three archives were eventually donated to a museum in Nagasaki, The Peace Museum in Chicago, and the Museum of Photographic Arts’ permanent collection. MoPA’s Nagasaki Journey archive contains a portion of the archive, which consists of over one hundred photographs and supplementary materials. As part of MoPA’s permanent collection, the archive is available for exhibition, research, and viewing. Contact the curatorial department or the library for information on archive materials.