This weekend I am attending San Francisco Photo Alliance’s Our World portfolio review event at the San Francisco Art Institute. Over the next two days, I will have 10 twenty minute sessions with other artists, curators, educators and gallerists. We participants each received a list of forty choices of reviewers to reduce down to 10 as our optimal list of reviewers. I don’t anticipate getting my top 10. I will be happy with 6 though.
This is my second portfolio review event. The first one I participated in was last year’s PhotoLucida conference in Portland. It’s been fascinating to track what has come from it. It is a good lesson in marketing and being open and aware of how to lead a flow of events when you’re unsure of where it’s all heading.
A case in point… At PhotoLucida, I left two different postcards out for people to pick up as well as business cards. I honestly didn’t think anything would come of it, but a few months after the reviews ended, I got an e-mail from Aline Smithson who wanted to interview me for a piece that would run in an upcoming issue of Light Leaks magazine. I never actually met Aline. But the issue has just now come out and it’s a beautiful feature piece with about 10 images from my Displaced: Part II portfolio. What is even more interesting is that a few days after the issue was released, I got another e-mail from Quinton Gordon, the director of the LUZ Gallery in Victoria, British Columbia expressing an interest in possibly including some of that work in a group show in 2010. I don’t know if Quinton saw the Light Leaks issue (shame on me for not inquiring yet), but the timing was right for me to make the assumption. What is the lesson here? Never assume anything about what will bring exposure. One of the best things to come from that event happened because someone I never met picked up a card, kept it, and contacted me later for an interview.
Another follow-up story from PhotoLucida… One of the reviewers that I met with was Thom Sempere, the Executive Director of the San Francisco Photo Alliance. I would say he was one of the reviewers that understood and appreciated my work the most. I remember leaving our session wondering, what if anything, could come from it. They don’t have a gallery, they don’t represent artists, but it was nice to get the feedback none-the-less.
Then, last December, a good 8 months after we met, he sent me an e-mail asking me to donate a print for their annual auction. I agreed mostly because I respected Thom and wanted to help him. I knew he had kept me and my work in the back of his mind and I felt that by donating a print, it would support someone who had already given me a lot of encouragement. After the auction occurred, he followed up with me saying that he had spoken to Ed Carey, the director of Gallery 291 and that I should get in touch with him to schedule an appointment to show some prints. Gallery 291 (www.gallery291.net) is a gorgeous gallery, right on Union Square in downtown San Francisco. I was amazed that Thom had been able to make such a perfect match for my work. Ed shows beautiful work, and all of the pieces I have seen have an attention to craftsmanship and printing that is extremely important to me. I made a trip down to San Francisco last November, met Ed in the gallery and presented my work. It was a good meeting, he seemed genuinely interested in the work, and me, and it gave me an opportunity to explore the gallery, see the prints they were showing, how the space was broken up, etc. The other work that was being shown was elegant and well executed. The space was beautiful, the location, ideal. I left the meeting feeling optimistic. I’m meeting Ed Carey for lunch for our second meeting tomorrow (today I should say) at 12:30p.m. I bring this story up because again, I was surprised. I really had no idea what, if anything, would come from my initial meeting with Thom Sempere, but my work must have stuck with him, and he has gone out of his way to help me. The point here is no matter who you meet, what your initial impressions of them are, you should treat everyone as if they were going to give you a big break in your career.
As I prepare for this second portfolio review event, I thought I would share some tips from what I have learned thus far in this awkward process of having what feels like 5 seconds to describe work that has taken a lifetime to produce. First, be very careful about how much information you give. You don’t need to forcefeed what the concept behind your work is. If you do feel that urge, it may be that your work isn’t strong enough to convey the concept in the first place. Give the reviewer enough to be interested, and then let them have their own time and space to experience the photographs. Periods of silence are helpful, they give the reviewer time to become lost in the images. The twenty minutes goes very quickly so if you can seduce them into the story in that amount of time, you’re ahead of the game. Second, although many of the instructions for the review say to bring one full and complete body of work, I recommend bringing more. At PhotoLucida, I brought 2 portfolios, here I have brought 3. There were many times when I was presenting when there was time to go through another body. You will get a sense of whether the reviewer is into the first body of work pretty quickly. If they’re not, you’ll be thanking yourself immensely for bringing another series. I recommend bringing something that might show a different side of your abilities, to be able to make the point that you have range as a photographer and let them see that you have two completed portfolios, both spoken with the same voice. This is a big point to make in such a little amount of time, but bringing extra work can do that for you. Third, if possible, have something available that you can pass around that is a small, portable way for people to view your work. At PhotoLucida, I brought a book dummy for Displaced. I can’t tell you how many more people saw my work because I had something that could easily be passed around. It also pleased the reviewers to see that I had thought the project through to that level, and opened up a whole new way for them to see my work. It was not something I had thought through, the bringing of the book dummy, but I was incredibly happy to have it there.
The reviews start tomorrow morning. I will post more shortly!