Sep 28th, 2007
It seems the jury is always still out
It’s a lonely world out there sometimes.
I re-enter the photo blogsphere and what do I find? None other than a very generous reference to one of my pieces in Amy Stein’s blog. Thanks Amy. Looks like I have an excuse to contribute to her “Gifts in the Mail” thread.
I bring this up because the episode is a good illustration of my love hate relationship with juried exhibitions. They are a rite of passage for the emerging photographer (and often the established photographer as well), and I do believe they serve an important purpose. They give invaluable experience learning what it takes to get work together and shipped for a show, and they allow many of us to maintain active exhibition records.
Yet the experience itself is often a hollow and lonely one. The work goes out, and six weeks later comes back. Other than the occasional review (from which my work is usually conspicuously absent) or exhibition catalog (which I almost always thoroughly enjoy), there is no feedback as to what happened in between. The work could have sat in the basement and never even been unpacked for all I know.
There are of course exceptions to this rule. Jen Bekman’s HeyHotShot show is one I got some good feedback from. Now the Griffin show is another. However, I’ve never found them as fullfilling as the exhibitions I do with smaller groups of artists (this sort of exhibition has provided by far the best experiences of my exhibition career). My thanks again go to Amy for providing a foil to my normal juried exhibition experience!
Susana Raab has additional thoughts on her blog regarding juried exhibitions. They are worth checking out.