Silver Eye Center for Photography

Silver Eye Center for Photography, located between Bloomfield and Garfield on Penn Ave, is Pittsburgh’s first and only non-profit that is committed to promoting the wonders of contemporary photography. Silver Eye offers educational programs and exhibitions that are free to the public. They also serve as a space for aspiring artists to create and connect through their digital lab. The Silver Eye digital processing lab currently stands as the only resource in the Pittsburgh area that provides affordable access to high-quality printing equipment and photo processing tools. They provide resources such as printing, consulting, scanning, framing, and mounting as well as membership and access to a DIY lab space. 

The Center began as two separate organizations, the Blatant Image Gallery and the Silver Eye Photographic Workshop, and merged in 1985 making Silver Eye a wholistic center for photography that has an in-house photo processing lab attached to the main gallery. The Center relocated to its current location and underwent a modernization and complete renovation. Silver Eye hosts 4 new exhibitions every year from local Pittsburgh artists and emerging artists like Hannah Price and April Friges who aim to portray underrepresented communities and demonstrate the flexibility of photograph as a media. Silver Eye’s goal is to create an organization that provides underrepresented artists with access to accessible and affordable resources to display their work. The Center allows these artists to overcome the social and financial burdens of photo processing and getting involved with gallery exhibitions. All these exhibitions are open to the public at no cost, making the gallery experience affordable for not only the photographers but to the local community members that they are representing.