Silver Eye promotes the power of contemporary photography as a fine art medium by creating original exhibitions, unique educational programming, and a space for artists to learn, create, and connect through our digital lab. Our programs are dedicated to supporting the work of emerging, mid-career, and under-recognized artists and sharing that work with our diverse audience in engaging and meaningful ways.
Your support makes our exhibitions and programs possible
Plan your visit or schedule a tour
Create | Learn | Connect
Learn about Aaronel deRoy Gruber & Irving Gruber's legacy of creativity
Silver Eye is a proud founding member of Visual Arts Coalition for Equity
A year long, immersive internship for college junior and seniors
Silver Eye stewards PGH Photo Fair archive
1/10: Silver Eye began in 1979 as two separate organizations: Blatent Image Gallery, a cooperative gallery designed to provide exhibition space to local fine art photographers, and The Silver Eye Photographic Workshop, which brought nationally known photographers to Pittsburgh to exhibit their work and to conduct workshops.
2/10: These two organizations merged in 1985 and became the Blatent Image/Silver Eye, which later changed to Silver Eye Center for Photography in 1985.
3/10: Gallery visitors admire Dylan Vitone's panorama in Pittsburgh Now in the summer of 2005.
4/10: William Wade, Dylan Vitone, Annie O'Niell, Steven Adams, Carrie Schneider, Rob Long, Lake Fong, Henry Simonds, Linda Benedict-Jones, Ken Keely and Heather Mull.
5/10: Students respond to photographs by James VanDerZee, 2000
6/10: Gallery visitors to Keith Carter "Poet of the Ordinary" in 2004
7/10: In 2017 Silver Eye began the New Vision Campaign to relocate our gallery from the South Side to Penn Avenue.
8/10: In the summer of 2017 our main gallery was named for the artist and philanthropist Aaronell DeRoy Gruber and her husband Irving Gruber.
9/10: Silver Eye's first opening reception after relocating for the exhibition "Past Present Future."
10/10: The June 2017 Grand Re-Opening Party for Silver Eye after the relocation to the Bloomfield-Garfield neighborhood.
Executive Director
Leo Hsu is interested in questions around the ways that making and living with photographs shapes and is shaped by experience, and in the ways in which the medium’s tensions and possibilities are simultaneously troubling and energizing. He has worked as a writer and editor for Fraction Magazine and Foto8 and as a news photographer. He teaches in photography at Carnegie Mellon University, holds a PhD in Anthropology and New York State Certificate in Culture and Media from New York University, and brings fifteen years experience as a project manager. Born in Taipei, he grew up in Squirrel Hill and returned to Pittsburgh after many years away. Leo was a past Silver Eye board member and previously was the interim executive director at Silver Eye.
Deputy Director of Programs
helen@silvereye.org
Helen Trompeteler is a curator and writer deeply committed to supporting the vision of underrepresented artists working across expansive lens-based practices. As Deputy Director of Programs at Silver Eye, she brings twenty years of curatorial experience following roles at the Royal Collection Trust (UK), the National Portrait Gallery (UK), and as an independent curator. She has published extensively on photography for books and publications worldwide.
Deputy Director of Operations
jillian@silvereye.org
Jillian Daniels is a mixed-media artist, curator, and designer specializing in communication design. She holds a BS and BA from University at Buffalo and is a McNair Fellow whose research is grounded in historical narratives and design theory to better understand social, political, built, and cultural environments through visual and graphic storytelling.
Lab Manager
sean@silvereye.org
Sean Stewart is a photographer and artist with deep experience in digital printing, scanning, framing, and art handling. He holds a BFA from Drexel University and has shared his work at Silver Eye, VICE, and Juxtapose. Stewart’s work is quiet and contemplative, and his subject matter is centered around contemporary American issues.
Silver Eye is extraordinarily grateful for the generosity of our supporters.
Our Many Individual Donors
Allegheny Regional Asset District
The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts
The AW Mellon Foundation
Bloomberg Philanthropies
FedEx Ground
The Heinz Endowments
The Henry John Simonds Foundation
The Hillman Foundation
The Irving and Aaronel deRoy Gruber Foundation
The Jack Buncher Foundation
Joy of Giving Something
The Laurel Foundation
The Leonian Foundation
The National Endowment for the Arts
The Opportunity Fund
The Pittsburgh Foundation
The William Talbott Hillman Foundation