Board President

Over a career spanning four decades, Hal Fischer has been an artist, art critic, and museum professional. Fischer’s work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions and is featured in both public and private collections. In the 1970s his reviews and articles on photography regularly appeared in such journals as Artweek, Artforum, and Afterimage. The recipient of NEA fellowships in both photography and criticism, in 1977 Fischer gained nonprofit status for San Francisco Camerawork and assembled that organization’s first volunteer board. In 1984 Fischer embarked on a career as an independent fundraising and museum consultant. His practice included key long-term client associations with the Timken Museum of Art, where he created their first development program and served as director of exhibitions and publications from 1985 to 2007; the Asian Art Museum, where he did fund development and project directed major international loan exhibitions from 1988 to 2003; and the Balboa Art Conservation Center, where he realized major funding for BACC’s endowment and outreach initiative. His roster of past clients includes the For-Site Foundation, San Francisco Camerawork (interim director), Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum, and the Riverside Community College District, which commissioned him in 2011 to create the collection-based Center for Social Justice and Civil Liberties.  

With the inclusion of Fischer’s photographs in Under the Big Black Sun: California Art, 1974-81 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, his work from the late 1970s came back into public view. In 2020 the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art presented Thought Pieces: 1970s Photographs by Lew Thomas, Donna-Lee Phillips, and Hal Fischer. His work is in the collections of numerous museums, including New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Krannert Art Museum, Fotomuseum Winterthur, and the Reina Sofia, Madrid. Hal Fischer: Seminal Works, Fischer’s fourth book, was published by Aperture in early 2026. Itfeatures Fischer’s iconic works from the late 1970salong withhis rarely seen early photography and a dynamic range of essays that consider queer culture and social change in San Francisco.  More information: Gaysemiotics.com

Board Secretary

Sarah M. Miller is a historian of photography and modern/contemporary art. An independent scholar and 2025-26 ACLS Fellow, she was formerly Associate Teaching Professor of Art History at Mills College (now Northeastern University) in Oakland, California. She has also taught at UC Santa Cruz, CCA, SFAI, SF State, and the University of Chicago. She holds a PhD from the University of Chicago.

Her 2020 book Documentary in Dispute: The Original Manuscript of Changing New York by Berenice Abbott and Elizabeth McCausland was awarded the College Art Association’s Alfred H. Barr Jr. prize and the Photography Network’s book prize. Her reviews, interviews, and other writings have appeared in Aperture, Artforum, Critical Inquiry, Études photographiques, History of Photography, Photography & Culture, caa.reviews, and in publications of SF Camerawork, the Harvard Art Museums, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Zimmerli Museum at Rutgers, and the Ryerson Image Centre. Her current book project examines how contemporary photo artists mobilize analog materials, tools, and processes to conceptual ends. Sarah serves on the Board of Photography Network, a scholarly society for photo studies, and on Oakland’s Public Art Advisory Committee.

Board Member

Alex Ramos is a photographer and creative director based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has worked in the photographic field for nearly twenty years across galleries, retail, and publishing. In 2014, Ramos helped open Leica Store San Francisco, where he established and managed its gallery program and now serves as a creative advisor. Over the years, his role expanded to include producing workshops and curating the store’s bookshop, which offers one of the widest selections of photobooks in the Bay Area. Through this work, he has remained closely connected to the photographic community, supporting exhibitions, publications, and collaborative projects. He is also the founder of Ramos Projects, an independent platform for creative collaborations, workshops, and other initiatives.

Ramos’s photography explores railroads and their influence on the American West. Rooted in an early fascination with trains—shaped by growing up near the tracks in Berkeley, California, having family members who worked for the railroad, and later working aboard trains himself—his projects examine landscape, movement, and the layered histories of railroading. His new book, It Will Hold You, published by Nazraeli Press, will be released in fall 2026. His photographs have been exhibited at the Chinese Historical Society of America, SFO Museum, and the California State Railroad Museum.

Board Member

Adrian Martinez is a San Francisco-based photographer, independent publisher, and museum professional who manages exhibition strategy for the Curatorial Division at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). He holds a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) from California College of the Arts.

As an artist, Martinez’s work has been featured in Open Space (SFMOMA) and the British Journal of Photography, and exhibited in group presentations including Around Group f.64: Legacies and Counterhistories in Bay Area Photography at SFMOMA. In 2023, he presented work alongside Austin Leong and Henry Wessel in With Soft Eyes at the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel, California. A companion publication, Soft Eyes, was published by Deadbeat Club in 2024.

In 2016, Martinez founded illetante books, an independent publishing imprint focused on collaborations with artists and colleagues. His publishing work was included in the 2019 SFMOMA exhibition Printed Publics: Contemporary Art and Design Publishing in the Bay Area. He also co-directs Book & Job Gallery, a photographer-run studio, darkroom, and gallery space in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood.

Board Member

Erika Gentry is an internationally exhibited interdisciplinary artist and educator working in photography, video, and installation. Her art practice explores the relationship between technology and place and is informed by the history of photography. An early adopter of multimedia arts, she has practiced and taught photography and related media since 1996 at institutions including The Rochester Institute of Technology, San Francisco Art Institute, and Foothill College. She has been a Professor at City College of San Francisco since 2001, where she currently serves as Chair of the Photography Department.

Gentry holds a BA from the University of Oregon and an MFA from Rochester Institute of Technology. Her professional service includes leadership roles with the Society for Photographic Education, LensCulture, Fotovision, and SF Camerawork, where she previously served as Chair of Programs. Her practice and teaching bridge photographic history, contemporary image-making, photographic processes, and arts education.

Chair of Advisory Board

Sharon Tanenbaum has forty years of experience across arts leadership, consulting, and creative practice. As principal of consulting firm Sharon Tanenbaum & Associates, she helps arts institutions strengthen their strategic and financial planning, build capacity, and advance ambitious capital campaigns. From 2004 to 2010, she served as executive director of SF Camerawork, following a decade as a consultant to the organization. Under her leadership, SF Camerawork sustained fiscal stability while earning critical recognition for its exhibitions and publications. Sharon’s background as an artist—including work on a film honored with a Sundance Grand Jury Prize and the Freedom of Expression Award—continues to shape her deep engagement with the field.

Her career reflects a strong commitment to artists and the organizations that support them. In addition to her consulting work, Sharon served as executive director of the Artists’ Legacy Foundation and director of the Hospitality House Arts Program, leading work in grantmaking, fund development, strategic planning, and cultural programming across a wide range of artistic communities.

Sharon’s commitment to the arts extends to board and civic leadership. She currently serves as Vice Chair of the Board of Directors at Root Division, Co-Chair of SFMOMA’s SECA Council, and an ex-officio Board Member of SFMOMA. She previously served as Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of Headlands Center for the Arts from 2014 to 2020.