2008 Spotlight Semifinalist

Mrs. Dooley's Bell High student, Alfredo Gomez, was recognized in the still photography category of the LA Music Center’s Spotlight Awards, a highly competitive and esteemed art contest. Alfredo received the high honor of being chosen as one of the top twelve most promising young photographers (out of close to 1,000) in all of southern California! His photo was exhibited at the Pacific Asia Art Museum in Pasadena, along with the other photo and art finalists, from March 14 through 16, 2008. In addition, a special reception in their honor was held at the museum on March 15 for the students, their families and their teachers.

A thousand students entered this 20-year-old, nationally acclaimed contest from across all of Southern California -from Los Angeles to San Diego to Santa Barbara.

Only 12 photo students were chosen out of this huge pool of entrants. Alfredo brought special honor to Bell Senior High since 90% of the semi-finalist student photographers were from private schools such as Harvard-Westlake (costs $23,000 a year), the Marlborough School (costs $25,250 a year) and Crossroads (costs ~$15,000 a year). He was the only student chosen from Southeast LA, or from a primarily Latino LAUSD high school.

The 1,000+ submissions were reviewed by leading photography professionals, including the current Photography Department Chair of the world-renowned Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, who considered the technical expertise involved in each work including its craft and visual quality and also analyzed how effectively the works expanded artistic boundaries and demonstrated artistic sensitivity and vision. The judges also met with all the semi-finalists to interview them about their artworks. All semi-finalists received cash awards of $100.