The School of Visual Arts will always be a New York City institution, but outside of the city's greater metropolitan area, there may be no place more SVA alumni call home than California. This makes sense: The state has long had a reputation as a destination for creative visionaries, and its well-known entertainment and technology industries have an endless need for artists, designers and filmmakers.

For its fall/winter 2019 edition, SVA's magazine, Visual Arts Journal, asked alumni and faculty photographers to contribute work they had made in and about California, all capturing different aspects of one of America's most diverse and populous states. Jacqueline Bates (MFA 2009 Photography, Video and Related Media; BFA 2004 Photography), the award-winning photography director of The California Sunday Magazine, served as a guest editor.

"As a native New Yorker getting off the plane for the first time in California, I was struck by one thing immediately: how different the light is," she says. "It feels and looks different out here—the West seems open to possibility. The climate is diverse and so are the stories that we tell.

"This portfolio of work shows firsthand the wide array of stories that are set here: from the deserts to the oceans, from small and personal anecdotes about what it means to be a Californian to larger stories that impact our criminal justice system, the environment and the way we live."