APA San Diego: Untitled 2025

Narrowing down the entries for APA San Diego’s annual Untitled photographic exhibition was an exercise in despair. I and my fellow juror, Shana Lopes, were tasked with narrowing down a hundreds of photographs to the group of twenty-six final photographs you see here. It was an exercise in distillation that is not always a pleasure to do. By its nature, any exhibition requires that I abandon images I love. With Untitled, it was absolutely the case because of the not-bad problem that there were so many arresting images to choose from within the group overall. Many photographers submitted multiple images that were worthy of the final round. This was an impressive group of images and of photographers, many whom were previously unknown to me, another happy outcome.

After rounds of eliminations, cutting down to the final group is excruciating. By the time I have thirty, forty, or even fifty or sixty remaining photographs, I have grown attached and don’t want to let them go. Another goal is to bring as many photographers as possible into the final round. And sometimes it is impossible. Several photographers who submitted multiple images to this exhibition made this part of the process difficult. Among these finalists, these top three struck me from the moment I first saw them and did not weaken their hold on me at any point. The works are by, in no particular order, Jaydon Miller; Moonsung Lee, and Barron Bixler.

Jaydon Miller’s photograph of a man getting his hair done at home—by his mother or another relative? That we don’t know doesn’t matter—beautifully depicts a rarely-seen moment of caretaking in the home, a grooming ritual usually only shown when women are the subjects. That viewers are seldom allowed into a private home to witness this moment, which is both vulnerable and prideful, effectively communicates the poignancy of this interaction. The low angle of Miller’s lens calls attention to the ceiling fan, cottage cheese ceiling, and the halo light that turns the big blast of hair spray into an ethereal mist. While similar scenes from barbershops and salons still hold appeal, they are not uncommon. Miller’s choices of subject matter and craft make this image continue to stand out.

Moonsung Lee’s photograph portrays another familiar scene— a restaurant kitchen’s industrial shelving unit piled with empty food containers. It’s almost difficult to say what about this image first captivated me. But, the elements that continue to capture my attention are the same: the geometry of the tall shelves within the vertical frame; the repetitive shapes of the stacked containers and buckets under the sink; the near lack of color apart from grays and whites; and the sole visible light source being a cold fluorescent on high. With these details, Lee has portrayed this commonplace subject with a certain stillness and reverence that is magnetic.

Finally, Barron Bixler’s photograph of wildfire cleanup in California strikes a nerve. A lone figure wearing a mask and jumpsuit, bent over, seemingly alone in a sea of rubble, a haze muting the air quality between him and the distant hills where houses still stand, does the cruel, difficult work of cleanup in this landscape of environmental and emotional devastation. Situated smack dab in the middle of the frame, the man’s full attention is on the task at hand. Bixler’s photograph recalls images of laborers from earlier decades and centuries. Echoes of Depression-era photographs of people laboring in similarly difficult conditions and much-older paintings depicting similarly hunched-over workers draw a line through time connecting manual labor of today with centuries past. The subject matter is inseparable from the serious subjects of socioeconomics of class and race, yet they neither distract from nor overtake the power of the image itself.