Lenscratch: The First Twenty Years

The beloved online platform Lenscratch is marking its twentieth anniversary, and LACP is celebrating this milestone with a group exhibition that depicts select winners of the Lenscratch Student Prize. Their works will be joined by the 2026 winner of the Aline Smithson Next Generation Award, which honors female-identified, LA-based emerging visual storytellers. Since it was launched in 2006 by artist and educator Aline Smithson as a personal blog, Lenscratch posted daily about thousands of photographers and their ecosystem. From resources about publishers, grants or institutions to in-depth conversations and features that depict photographers from across the world, Lenscratch is a focal point of the international photographic community and a vibrant forum with a global reach. In its first twenty years of activity, photographers and writers from across the world joined Smithson to sustain and drive forward this labor of love, and grew the platform as an equitable, transparent and supportive space for visual storytellers and their community. Reflecting on those histories and Lenscratch's path toward the future, this exhibition delves into the platform's extensive archive and returns to voices who were introduced to the photographic world on Lenscratch. In doing so, the exhibition celebrates practitioners and the experiences that inform their perspectives at a moment when human relationships with machines of vision and capturing seem particularly fraught, and networks of peers feel more needed than ever. Lenscratch: The First Twenty Years will feature the following FREE events and happenings: Opening reception on Saturday, December 5, 3 – 5pm @ LACP Headquarters, 252 S. Los Angeles St, Los Angeles, CA 90012