GayCities Photo Challenge: The Jury

A true child of the night, she got her taste for performance at the age of 21 at the legendary Trannyshack! in San Francisco. She was honored with an invitation to compete in the 11th annual Miss Trannyshack Pageant in 2006 and garnered first runner up in the world-famous drag pageant that year. In the same year, she also competed to win a slot in the award winning AIDS Housing Alliance Desperate Divas 2007. In 2007, Monistat was invited to perform in front of her largest audience to date: 150,000 people at SF Pride’s Fag Fridays stage. She was later tapped as the second drag co-hostess of SF BayAreas largest 18 and over party “The Crib.” She has been voted onto the San Francisco Bay Guardians “2008 Hot Queer List” as the “Drag Phenomenon.” And has filmed promotional videos with Margaret Cho for the “Cho Show” to air on MTV, Vh1, and Logo networks. Cho tapped Monistat recently to star in a music video for Jill Sobule’s new single “San Francisco” which will be airing in summer ‘09.

http://www.facebook.com/people/La-Monistat/757594320?ref=mf

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Jesse Archer is an actor and writer living in New York City. As a writer, he has been a long-time columnist for OUT magazine. In 2007, he published the travel memoir, "You Can Run", based on the 2 intrepid years he spent traveling South America. As an actor, Jesse has starred in such gay independent hits as Slutty Summer, A Four Letter Word, and the upcoming "Bye Bye, Fruit Fly", which he also wrote.

http://www.jesseonthebrink.com

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Jed Rosenthal Bell is a filmmaker who started out as a community organizer for ACT UP and queer civil rights campaigns, learning graphic design along the way by making posters and flyers, protest signs and newsletters. Jed wound up combining the collaborative skills of activism with the visual storytelling of graphic design to start making films. His first short, the queer noir crime drama "Foucault WHO?," has toured the globe, winning "best of fest" awards in the U.S. and Europe. His kvetchy animated trans satire "DRIVE THRU" is still making its way around the world after winning "Best Animation" at San Francisco's Rough Cut Film Festival.

http://headswillroll.net

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Stephen Ceplenski has spent the last sixteen years publishing the Circuit bible - noiZe Magazine. Within its first 5 years, the pamphlet had grown into a full-fledged commercial magazine, with advertising from the party promoters they covered and a thriving section of photography that became an integral part of the magazine's appeal to the Circuit community. Working closely with party photographers such as Moody Mustafa, Joe Pessa, and Great Party Pics, Ceplenski championed the visual artistry of the scene and made photography a central component of the magazine's website when it was launched. Noizemag.com now proudly boasts of the largest and most popular collection of Circuit photography in the world, and it remains the most well-trafficked section of the site. Entering its sixteenth year, Ceplenski plans to steer the noiZe brand to even bigger and better heights, creating a multi-media portal into the still-thriving world of the Circuit and its surrounding events, festivals, cruises and the nightlife surrounding it.

http://www.noizemag.com

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Will Clark has been working in the XXX industry since 1995 as a performer, writer, event producer, fundraiser, MC and photographer. He created and produced the legendary Bad Boys Pool Parties in both LA and Palm Springs as well as other Bad Boys events in Chicago, San Francisco and New York. He's wirtten for over a dozen print magazines and newspapers including Skinflicks, International Leatherman, the New York Blade, Dude, and others as well as his own weekly column, "Porn Star Confidential" which he wrote weekly for ten years. He now writes a blog and is in the fifth year of producing and hosting "Porno Bingo" - a weekly fundraising event for New York based LGBT non profits. You can find him on Twitter at WillClarkWorld and on Facebook at WillClark.

http://www.willclarkworld.com

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Crescent Diamond is a filmmaker and activist, and loves living in what she likes to call "Gayland". She likes to dance to homohop and watch queers on the small and big screen. Her films and television shows usually focus on social and political issues, and feature independent musicians and artists. She is the Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of Berkeley Community Media, and is currently producing a feature documentary about the Feminist Art Movement of the 1970s, called "Heretics: Stories from a Feminist Art Collective". Crescent is a graduate student at San Francisco State University, working on an MFA in Cinema.

http://www.crescentdiamond.tv - http://www.heresiesfilmproject.org - http://www.heresiesfilmproject.org

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Robert Dodge is a photographer and former award-winning journalist. He worked for The Dallas Morning News for 24 years where he was a Washington correspondent for about two decades. Robert is also a past president of the National Lesbian and Journalist Association. His experience in photography dates to his teen years when he provided photo coverage of local sporting events for the hometown newspaper. Robert now specializes in landscapes and male portraiture, including body figures. He has studied under numerous master photographers, including Joyce Tenneson, Rodney Smith and Linde Waidhofer. Robert is currently working on a color project about Vietnam.

http://www.RobertDodge.com - http://www.photographyofrobertdodge.blogspot.com

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Rich Dominiak works as the product manager for online photo at the world's largest retailer, but spends his free time photographing his travels. With a scientific background and working at Department of Energy labs, he learned that math, formulas, and functions can be an art form. Later working on digital imaging at Sony, he learned that design and function can enhance usability. For him, this translates into photography that captures shapes, seeks patterns, and shows that randomness is actually the norm. Originally from the midwest and now living in San Francisco, Rich likes to road-trip with his partner around the United States, seeing the wonders that nature creates.

http://www.twitter.com/richdom - http://www.linkedin.com/in/richarddominiak

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Adam Drucker casts compelling “real people,” actors and outstanding talent/experts for television series and new media. He was the original casting producer for A&E's award-winning documentary series INTERVENTION and created the show's delicate process for finding the people struggling with addiction. He was the director of broadcast talent development at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, worked for several seasons on the casting teams of CBS’ SURVIVOR and the Emmy Award-winning THE AMAZING RACE and has worked as a casting producer for shows on HBO, E!, Lifetime, Bravo and NBC. Most recently, he found the NYC high school students at the heart of Bravo’s docu-soap NYC PREP and cast Showtime’s documentary series WAY OUT (currently shooting), which profiles gays and lesbians coming out to important people in their lives. In addition to his casting work, Drucker has teamed with several production companies to develop and produce shows for TV and new media which center around some of the extraordinary people he’s encountered in his career. A native New Yorker, Drucker graduated from Yale University magna cum laude. He resides in Los Angeles, CA.

http://twitter.com/AdamDrucker - http://www.linkedin.com/in/adamdrucker - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1026006/

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Jörg Fockele is an award winning filmmaker who has written and directed over ten short films and documentaries, numerous music videos and produced/ directed television shows such as “Queer Eye” and “Wife Swap”. Of the awards and distinctions he has received, the most important ones are retrospectives at the Goethe Institutes New York City, San Francisco, Chicago and Mexico City, 2 Emmys and a special prize from the International Film Festival in Berlin. Originally from Hamburg in Germany, Jörg lived in New York for 13 years before he moved to San Francisco in 2008. He is making a living directing segments for the Sundance Channel's documentary series "Big Ideas for a Small Planet" while at the same time working on two feature scripts.

http://www.fockele.com - http://www.elevationtalent.com/JorgFockele_TV.html

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Glenn Gaylord attended UCLA’s School of Film and Television, and has written numerous feature scripts while working full time as a Health Educator for AIDS Project Los Angeles during the height of the crisis. He followed this with a stint as a teacher at L.A. County Jail, where he started one of the country’s first condom distribution programs. Glenn then directed two shorts, Lost Cause and Boychick. The shorts won numerous awards including the Seattle International Film Festival’s Golden Space Needle and the Peter S. Reed Filmmaker Foundation Grant. Glenn followed with a commission to co-write a play, The Bus, for the prestigious Mark Taper Forum. Glenn served as director and senior producer for the recent hit series, What Perez Sez, and also wrote and directed Lez Be Friends, a sitcom pilot about a butch lesbian who pretends to be a femmie straight girl in order to live with her two gay male roommates. This year, Glenn will be making his feature directorial debut with Eating Out 3. Glenn will be premiering his latest short, Little BFFs at festivals this summer.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0310935/ - http://www.myspace.com/glenninla - http://www.facebook.com/badges.php#/profile.php?id=720603734&ref=profile

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Lisa Geduldig is a stand up comic, comedy producer, and bilingual (Spanish/English) freelance arts publicist. She has been performing comedy for 20 years and producing for 17. Lisa is the creator, producer, and MC of a variety of annual long-running, successful comedy shows in San Francisco - Kung Pao Kosher Comedy: Jewish Comedy on Christmas in a Chinese Restaurant, now in it 17th year; Funny Girlz: A Smorgasbord of Women Comedians; The George Bush Going Away Party: An Evening of Political Comedy; A Muslim, A Mormon, and A Jew Walk into A Bar: The Comedy of Religion; The Color of Funny: A Multi-Culty Comedy Show; Comedy Returns to El Rio; Charo and Her Las Vegas Show.

http://www.koshercomedy.com

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Kevin Goebel, a fifth-generation native born San Franciscan raised primarily in Sonoma County before returning to attend college at UC Berkeley, is a self-proclaimed documentarian of San Francisco's gay nightlife. He has taken over 35,000 photos since 2006, primarily of gay events throughout the City. He is a co-owner and co-founder of the Big Gay Frat House, a private home in the Castro that has raised over $30,000 for different LGBT charities through house parties and other events.

http://www.biggayfrathouse.com - http://biggayfrathouse.typepad.com/ - http://www.flickr.com/photos/kevingoebel/sets/

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Guterres’ production design experience spans from Russia in the 1890’s, Mexico at present day, to a period 1970’s mockumentary about Bruce Lee stand-in wannabees called Finishing The Game, which premiered at Sundance 2007. Candi has acquired extensive design & construction experience ranging from studio films to independent features, television series for Nickelodeon, Logo TV and MTV Networks, global webisode series spanning Los Angeles, Paris and Tokyo, as well as numerous commercials, interstitials and music videos. Candi helped launch, establish and Art Direct the Silver Lake Film Festival, and has served as Art Director of Platinum Oasis for Outfest, Los Angeles Film Festival, and Queer Lounge for the Sundance Film Festival. Most recently, she was the Mexico Unit Art Director for Fast & Furious. Candi is now segueing into producing and directing, and currently lives, works, and travels regularly between Mexico and Los Angeles.

http://www.candivision.com/

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Moxy Hart is an award winning fine artist from Capetown South Africa who concentrates on depicting the male form in oil on canvas and charcoal on paper. His work has been sold to private collectors across the globe.

http://www.moxyhart.com

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David is the creator behind blog factory Jossip Initiatives, which spits out Queerty.com, the most-read gay lifestyle site on the web. Oprah has not said she's Queerty's biggest fan! One time David fell asleep while Fidel Castro was talking to him. He lives in Los Angeles and Manhattan with his boyfriend, who won't let him have a dog.

http://www.queerty.com/ - http://www.pinkisthenewblog.com/ - http://can.imarrygay.com/

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Glen Helfand writes for Artforum, CMYK, and numerous other publications, teaches courses in contemporary art at California College of the Arts, Mills College, and the San Francisco Art Institute (where he also organizes the Visiting Artists and Scholars Lecture Series). He has organized exhibitions for venues including the de Young Museum, San Francisco; San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA; Dust Gallery, Las Vegas, and others.

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Mark Kliem has been in the adult business full time since 1996. He has directed 8 feature-length movies for Brush Creek Media and freelanced for Titan Media, Le Salon, Hot House, Falcon, All Worlds, P.R, Simon, and Chi Chi LaRue. He helped launch Naked Sword and Gay Porn Blog and served as a judge of the GayVN Awards since 2001. He won a Cybersocket Award for "Best Blog" in 2005 and received several other nominations, including GLBT of the Year at Xbiz 2008. He was named Official Photographer of the GayVN Awards 2009. A slideshow of his photos are currently running at the Yerba Buena Center For The Arts as part of the exhibit "Under A Full Moon: 30 Years of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence". He has been running his own company, Lavender Lounge Studios, full time since 2003. He is working on a long-term project of collecting vintage gay porn magazines and re-releasing “lost” 8mm gay porn movies on DVD.

http://www.LavenderLounge.com - http://www.LavenderLounge.com/blog - http://www.SisterZsaZsa.com

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Having built up an impressive painting career in San Francisco, Scooter packed up his bags and moved to New York City. He lives and paints in his art studio in Manhattan's famous East Village. He has shown at numerous galleries around the Big Apple, such at Exit Art, Wooster Projects and White Columns to name a few. His paintings will also be shown at Scope Art Fair in the Hamptons. Scooter's paintings are permanently on display at Antoine Proulx Showroom in Phoenix, AZ as well as San Angel Folk Art Gallery in San Antonio, TX. Scooter's tee shirt line has been snagged by Iggy Pop, Sandra Bernhard and Perez Hilton and also can be seen on many characters on the day time soap opera The Guiding Light and Survivor. The tee shirt collection is featured at Patricia Field, Trash and Vaudeville and Live Fast - (all NYC boutiques) Scooter has previously worked for Marc Jacobs and Jimmy Choo as well as dressed windows with Barneys NYC. Scooter's paintings have been featured in Spankzine, Out magazine, Genre magazine and GayTimes UK. Scooter studied painting at the Universtiy of Arizona and NYC's Cooper Union.

http://www.scooterlaforge.com - http://www.antoineproulx.com/scooter.html - http://www.sanangelfolkart.com/scooter/

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Liam Mayclem is an Emmy award winning host and a producer for CBS5 TV's Eye on The Bay. Liam was recently nominated for his fourth EMMY Award for his TV special - "MILK: the man, the movie." He has cooked with the world's top chef's: Thomas Keller, Tyler Florence, Martin Yan, Cat Cora and many more. Liam also covers the Grammys for CBS 5 TV. He has interviewed a who’s who in music: BB King, Ringo Starr, Sting, Tony Bennett and many more. His TV career kicked off in 1989 when he joined Channel TV on the island of Jersey, UK as a News Announcer and reporter. Radio is another passion. Liam hosts and produces a weekly radio spot for CBS Radio - Bay Area staycations: a guide to weekly getaways around the Bay. Liam lives in San Francisco with his partner of three years, photographer Rick Camargo.

http://www.cbs5.com/eyeonthebay - http://www.cbs5.com/liamslist

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Adam Sandel is a playwright, lyricist, arts journalist, and the host of the internet radio show "Happy Hour" on EnergyTalkRadio.com. "Happy Hour" is a weekly celebration of what makes us happy -- from pop culture to comedy -- exploring topics both trivial and profound.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/profile.php?id=502308352&ref=profile - http://www.energytalkradio.com - http://www.energytalkradio.com/programs.html

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Jeffrey Schwarz is President & CEO of Automat Pictures, a multi-award winning entertainment company based in Los Angeles. Automat is widely recognized as one of the industry¹s leading producers of studio EPKs (electronic press kits), DVD content, original television specials, and feature films. In addition to overseeing the day-to-day operations of Automat Pictures, Jeffrey is an award winning documentary producer, whose work includes Wrangler: Anatomy of an Icon, a portrait of adult film star Jack Wrangler, and Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story, which won the Documentary Audience Award the AFI Fest 2007. A New York native, Jeffrey attended SUNY Purchase's Film Department.

http://www.automatpictures.com - http://www.wranglermovie.com - http://www.spinetinglermovie.com

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Jeff Sheng is an artist, activist and photographer based in Los Angeles, CA. He is most known for his photographic series “Fearless,” a project about openly gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender athletes who are “out” on their high school and college sports teams. His photographs have been published in the New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, and the Advocate. “Fearless” was recently featured at ESPN headquarters in Bristol, CT, and will be exhibited this July at the 2009 World Outgames in Copenhagen, Denmark. Jeff also teaches at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

http://www.FearlessCampusTour.org - http://www.jeffsheng.com - http://www.facebook.com/jeffsheng

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Marc Smolowitz is an Academy Award nominated film, television & new media producer (The Weather Underground '03, Trembling Before G-d '01) with 18+ years of diverse professional experience across all aspects of the entertainment business. In 2009, he works as a Executive Producer & Consultant to a dynamic slate of S.F. Bay Area-based companies, primarily in media, technology, journalism and content production. Most recently, he was the Producer at TellyTopia, a Silicon Valley company that provides IP-TV services & VOD product solutions to cable operators, satellite companies and online media properties. In San Francisco, he serves on number of nonprofit Boards, furthering his commitment to the arts, journalism and public media. Notably, he is the Chair of the Technology Impact Circle at Full Circle Fund, an engaged philanthropy group that gives grants to Bay Area nonprofits working on innovative technology projects. Finally, he is Faculty in the Digital Film Making program at the Art Institute of California-San Francisco.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/marcsmolowitz - http://twitter.com/marcsmolowitz

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Wickie Stamps is a widely published writer and emerging screenwriter whose work has appeared in The Advocate, OutWeek, Gay Community News, Frontiers, Drummer, Socialist Review, and over a dozen short-story collections. Writer of the award-winning short film "Foucault WHO?, Wickie is currently finishing her first novel, a strange Southern tale of queerness and crime. Her current obsessions include crime, horror, dark arts, and small dogs. Wickie also offers Creative Co-Conspiracy Services (a.k.a. coaching) in her alternate persona, Monstre Sacré.

http://headswillroll.net/more/monstre.html - http://monstresacre.net

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Susan Stryker is Associate Professor of Gender Studies at Indiana University. She is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker (Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria, 2005) and a Lambda Literary Award-winning author (The Transgender Studies Reader, 2006). Her archival research, historical scholarship, and theoretical writings have helped shape the field of transgender studies since the early 1990s.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Susan-Stryker/649354993

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Recently named one of OUT Magazine's People of the Year, Joël Barraquiel Tan is also the Director of Community Engagement at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, CA. His publications include El Canto de Animal (Noice Press, 2006) and Monster- Poems (Noice Press, 2002). Tan has been nominated for Lambda Literary Award, Best Anthology, 1998 and his work is widely taught in the field of culture and sexuality studies. Joel Tan received his M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Literature from Antioch University in 2004, and his B.A. in Ethnic Studies at University of California, Berkeley in 2002. Tan is also the Founding Board President of the Center for Disease Control and Association of Schools of Public Health’s Institute of HIV Prevention Leadership Alumni Association (2002-2003) and a cofounder of Los Angeles' Asian Pacific AIDS Intervention Team. He is currently working on a libretto based on Sylvester's life.

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Jenifer started taking photos in high school and her love of photography has been unquenchable since. She has received an A.A and a B.F.A. in Photography. Jen is currently a freelance photographer and digital tech in the San Francisco Bay area. She has problem-solved for a variety of photographers including event, fashion, sports, catalog, and editorial. Prior to moving to the bay area, Jen managed a lab specializing in large format E-6 & C-41 processing.

http://www.digitalworkflowtech.com - http://www.weddingsbywainz.com

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Amy Ziering is an award-winning Los Angeles producer and director. Her most recent film, OUTRAGE, directed by Kirby Dick, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, won Best Documentary at the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and is currently in theatrical release. Prior to this, Ziering produced the feature THE MEMORY THIEF. The film was a NY Times critics pick and a top audience pick and critics pick at the Philadelphia Film Festival. Ziering also co-directed and produced DERRIDA, a documentary about the world renowned French philosopher, Jacques Derrida, the ‘founder’ of deconstruction. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, won the Golden Gate award at the San Francisco Film Festival, and was released domestically by Zeitgeist Films and internationally in Germany, France and the UK. Prior to that, Ziering produced Richard Cohen’s TAYLOR’S CAMPAIGN, a documentary about a homeless person running for the mayor of Santa Monica.

http://www.outragethemovie.com - http://www.derridathemovie.com

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