Saturday, March 26, 2011

Promoting Your Work

I had a good talk today with Quinton Gordon of Luz Photography Gallery in Victoria. Quinton advised me on ways to promote my work, the main points of our discussion related to:

- the importance of getting your work into book form. Books support your work on multiple levels and also help the artist and the gallery because they are a affordable alternative to prints.

- the importance of going to photography festivals to get your work seen and critiqued by established people in the industry. I will link some of these festivals later as I learn more about them.

- the importance of building contacts with the publishing and art community.

I am not sure how successful I will be at attempting these things, I will try to follow some of the suggestions made. The time required to do this is what I worry about, if it interferes with my ability to make new work and grow as a photographer then I think that's where I would draw the line. I have to try to get a book made at least a blurb.com book which will give me a mock up I could show at the festivals, show people in the industry, galleries etc.

If I had two choices, to create important work that might not be recognized for years maybe not until after my death or to get work recognized now but because of the lack of time and funds not create as much photography, I would choose the former. Creating new strong photographs is where its at for me, making the work has to take precedence over everything else.

I will try to get the photographs seen as much as I can (I want to tell the stories of the people in the images) but I do not want the photographs to suffer as a result. I will just have to see how it goes, will do my best. I am lucky to have a friend in a gallery like Luz, they will help me promote the work, thanks very much Quinton and Dianna.

Quinton's links are below (the curator of the gallery is Diana Millar), his website and his wonderful blog which is very informative should be required reading.

http://www.luzgallery.com/
http://www.luzgallery.com/blog/
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