VSCO Completes The Fifty With 25 More Billboard Photographers

By Olivia Hart

VSCO has named the final 25 photographers in The Fifty, completing a nationwide billboard exhibition with one photographer from each of the 50 US states. The company announced the campaign in August, then selected 50 photographers for large-format displays in their home markets, with their work licensed and compensated by VSCO.

What does the final announcement complete?

The first 25 names arrived in September; this second selection supplies the remaining 25, or half the full cohort. The complete roster and the photographers’ work are now available on VSCO’s website.

Ed Kashi’s selected work documents agricultural workers harvesting crops as part of a larger project examining climate change and labour. Representing New Jersey, he said he regarded it as an honour to join a project celebrating photography and to share his personal work with the world.

Lin Bvtcher brings a different subject to the campaign: women and their cars. Bvtcher said: “A billboard in California, my home state, and now a billboard in Times Square is truly an experience I will never forget and one I am immensely proud of.”

She said she had not imagined that her small project would take her to Times Square and described the experience as quite frankly a shock.

What replaces the gallery?

The format places photography outside a conventional gallery. With one photographer representing each state and each display placed in its home market, geography supplies the exhibition’s curatorial framework rather than a single thematic proposition. The result is an institutional hybrid: a photographic exhibition mounted on advertising space.

VSCO says the campaign reflects photography’s many ways of recording the world: changing traditions, migration and belonging, environmental challenges, and extraordinary moments found in everyday life.

The institutional claim is broader than public visibility. Eric Wittman, VSCO’s chief executive, said: “For 15 years, VSCO has championed photographers, giving them the tools and community to develop their craft and help them grow.”

Wittman said The Fifty puts photographers and their work before potential clients and brands, aiming to turn visibility into real job opportunities that help them build the careers they want.

What happens on November 7?

VSCO will hold a free, three-hour community event on Saturday, November 7, from 10 AM to 1 PM.

• Nat Segebre will join the event as the photographer selected to represent Florida.
• Melina Deya and Deun Ivory will also speak about the route from photography as a hobby to a profession.
• Paul Weaver, the Miami-based founder of The Freelance Photographer, VSCO’s professional-education platform, will moderate.

The three photographers will discuss their journeys from hobby to profession, the challenges they have faced and their defining moments of feeling they had made it. The format places working lives, rather than finished portfolios, at the centre.

Will visibility become paid work?

A billboard is not a brief, however large the format. The campaign guarantees licensed and compensated public placements; the announcement provides no earnings figures or client outcomes. That leaves VSCO’s professional promise open to proof.

The work itself offers a clearer proposition. Kashi’s photographs connect a specific occupation with a larger argument about climate and labour. Bvtcher’s series takes women and their cars as its everyday subject.

Their subjects remain distinct, and their public scale should not be mistaken for a shared aesthetic thesis.

The next measure is straightforward: whether the 50 photographers can turn those placements into paid assignments, the outcome VSCO says it wants from The Fifty.