The 2024 LVA Honors takes place on March 21, 2024 at the LVA Building. This week is the 1st of 3 conversations with Honors recipients, C.J. Pressma (Legacy Award), Jon Cherry (Community Impact), Amanda Thompson (Teaching), & Sheila fox (Emerging Artist). You may purchase tickets to this fundraiser HERE.
In 1970 C.J. Pressma founded the Center for Photographic Studies – an alternative school of creative photography. The Center provided a learning experience for those seeking to explore photography as creative expression. During its eight- year existence the center attracted students from over 35 states and foreign countries to its full-time resident program and provided part-time instruction and darkroom access for hundreds of students in the Louisville metropolitan area. Its two galleries provided monthly photographic exhibits featuring the works of local, regional, and internationally acclaimed photographic artists including Ansel Adams and Minor White. In 1978 he was awarded a National Endowment Fellowship in Photography.
In 1979 Pressma embarked on a career as a multimedia producer and marketing communications specialist. In 1984, his seven part series Witness to the Holocaust, was released in the U.S. and Canada where it remains in distribution today. One of the first productions to use survivor interviews as the exclusive content to tell the story of the Holocaust, Witness to the Holocaust has received numerous national awards
Jon Cherry is a photojournalist based in Louisville, Kentucky. Jon works as a stringer with Getty Images, Thomson Reuters, Bloomberg News, and The New York Times and has been published independently by The New York Times, Sierra, TIME Magazine, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, New York Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine, and others. Jon was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography as a part of the Getty Images team for “comprehensive and consistently riveting photos of the attack on the U.S. Capitol” with Win McNamee, Spencer Platt, Drew Angerer, and Sam Corum.
