Sharon Lavier O’Keefe, Executive Director

Sharon Lavier O’Keefe is the executive director of Portland’s Camerawork Gallery, the nation’s oldest continuously operating fine art photography gallery founded in 1970 through the encouragement of Minor White. Sharon founded iwitness gallery and is co-founder, Plates to Pixels Online, in Portland, OR.

Sharon has been engaged in all levels of photography for over 45 years and teaching photography for over 20 years. Her passion is helping photographers discover their photographic voice and nurturing them along their journey.

George Olson, Curator

George Olson is former Director of Photography of Sunset magazine.

George’s work has appeared in many publications including National Geographic, Time, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, Smithsonian and The New York Times.

Olson also served as a picture editor for many books in the of Day in the Life…series, Director of Photography of the book Baseball in America and edited Planet Vegas.

Since 1992, he has served on the faculty of the Missouri University Photo Workshop and taught Photography at the Summit Workshop in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

A collection of Olson’s humorous work, titled Roadside Distractions, was exhibited at Portland, Oregon’s iwitness Gallery in 2010, and selections from that exhibition have been featured in American Photographer magazine, D Image, and Worth magazines, Darkroom Photography, American Way,

A member of NPPA, and ASPP, he is on the Board of Directors of the Photography Council, Portland Art Museum.

Ken Hawkins, Curator

Ken Hawkins is a photojournalist who has covered politics, disasters, and conflict zones—including in Vietnam, Nicaragua, and El Salvador—since 1970, working globally for publications and agencies such as TIME, Sports Illustrated, Fortune, Forbes, Paris Match, Stern, the New York Times, Newsweek, Wired, and the British Broadcasting Corporation. For over two decades, his work was represented by the premier photo agency SYGMA Paris/New York.

Hawkins has served on the boards of several nonprofit agencies relating to the arts, social action, and photojournalism. He was a founder of the Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar in 1973 and worked with the organization for thirty years. Ken also served as the Atlanta/Southeast chapter president of the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP), sitting on its national board and executive committee, and serving as ASMP’s national secretary.

In 2016, Hawkins authored Jimmy Carter – Photographs 1970 – 2010 with a foreword by Carter White House Deputy Press Secretary, Rex Granum.