Christa Bowden was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. She earned her MFA in photography with distinction from the University of Georgia and a BA in photography and film from Tulane University. She is a Professor of Art at Washington & Lee University, where she started the program in photography in 2006. She has been the recipient of a Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Professional Fellowship and a nominee for the Santa Fe Prize for Photography. Her work utilizes photo-based media to explore the intertwined connection between family, place, and the natural world. She lives in Lexington, Virginia, and has been visiting Cumberland Island regularly since she was three years old.
Emily J. Gómez is originally from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. She earned a BA in Fine Arts with an emphasis in Photography from Loyola University Chicago in 1998 and went on to work as the staff photographer for a Metropolitan Detroit newspaper, The Spinal Column Newsweekly, for five years. In 2006, she earned an MFA with Distinction in Photography from the University of Georgia. Since 2006, she has been a professor of art at Georgia College, where she teaches darkroom, digital, and alternative process photography. Her artistic interests lie in finding awe-inspiring landscapes, often while contemplating their complicated layers of human history.
Ernesto R. Gómez is originally from Highland, Michigan. He earned his BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and his MFA in sculpture from The University of Georgia where he graduated with distinction. Many of his sculptures utilize sound as the dominant element, and he also works with traditional sculptural materials such as bronze, iron, wood and stone. He has exhibited both in the United States and Internationally, and as a musician, he has performed in many experimental and standard rock ensembles. Ernesto is a Lecturer of Art at Georgia College, where he has taught studio foundations and sculpture since 2012. He lives in Milledgeville, Georgia.