Women In Focus Meeting Minutes--May 9, 2007

Calls for Photos:
• "About Face," depicting the diversity of human relationships--Zebulon, GA.
$15 to enter three photographs. Entry deadline August 29. For information contact
aboutfaceentry@yahoo.com.

• "Passions," Women's National Juried Show--Washington School of Photography. $25 to enter 4
photographs. Entry deadline June 28. For more information visit
http://wsp-photo.com.

• "A New Outlook on the World," The Shepherd Center Photo Contest, Atlanta, GA. $25 to enter 5
photographs. Entry deadline October 5, 2007. For more information visit
www.shepher.org/resources/photocontest.asp.

• "Embracing Differences," a show about diversity that will be a public showing of up to 40 billboard-sized
images in Freedom Park from September 29 to October 28, 2007. Entry deadline June 18. Visit
www.embracingdifferencesatl.org
for more information.

Show/Lecture Announcements:
• Solo

o Dorothy O'Connor, "The Bridal Show," Composition Gallery, May 19­21, 2007, Opening
May 19, 7p.m.­10 p.m.
o Gittel Price, Grace Gallery, East Cobb, May 1­June 30
o Name missed (I'm so sorry!!), Urban Tea Party on Highland Avenue, indefinite
o Name missed (This was my first night taking notes!), Morrow, through June 30
• Other
o "A Photographer's Life, 1990­2005," Exhibit, Annie Liebovitz, High Museum, May 12­
September 9.
o "Instant Gratification: Polaroid Photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe," Lecture, May 17, 2007,
7 p.m., High Museum Hill Auditorium.
o "Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer's Life, 1990-2005," Gallery Talk (guided tour through the
exhibit), High Museum, Wieland Pavilion Grand Lobby, Thursday, May 24, 6:30 p.m.
o Various Georgia photographers, "Responding to Home," MOCA GA. This show is curated by
Susan Todd-Raque and will open on September 27, 2007.
Business
o Be sure to take advantage of WIF's website presence opportunity! Each member can post 5­10
photos for a one-time $25 fee (directions for preparing photographs are posted on the website:
http://www.womeninfocus.us/photographers.html
). Our website gets 1000+ hits a week. So get
your name and your photos out there!
o WIF officers welcome suggestions and comments regarding our website, meetings, field trips,
speakers, shows, etc. Please let us know if you have anything to share (email any of the officers
listed on the officer page on the website:
http://www.womeninfocus.us/contactus.html).
Tonight's comments were that a member emailed information about a show that is not showing up on the
WIF website :( and that Women in Film Atlanta (WIFA) is supposed to be linked from the WIF
site (in June they are showing a film festival in Decatur of short films by women:
www.wifa.org).
o Present members voted to join the Visual Arts Network of Atlanta (VANA) based off of Susan
Todd-Raque's suggestion. Annual fee is $100.
o VANA recently made local artists aware that the AJC is cutting back its coverage of art events.
Please visit the VANA website to find out more and sign the petition:
www.visualartsatlanta.com.
o It was announced that in January MOCA GA will be moving to the Tula galleries (the galleries
where APG is located).
o Don't forget to find your venues for ACP shows NOW. Venues fill up fast, but the deadline for
ACP Guide entry is coming up even faster. Ask a favorite coffeehouse, restaurant, even a friend's
office after hours--just get out there and get shown, get your name in the ACP Guide.

Guest Speaker: Susan Todd-Raque--"Trends in Photography"
Susan Todd-Raque, one of the founders of Atlanta Celebrates Photography and a former teacher, is now curating shows and working with collectors. She visited with us to share her thoughts and observations on what she sees happening in photography currently. She did say she wanted her title to have a question mark at the end, though, because you just never know, really, where things will be going. :) Notes from Susan's discussion with us Wednesday night follow.

• She mentioned an art fair she encourages us all to go to if we get a chance: Art Basel Miami Beach
(December 6­9, 2007, $20­$30?, www.artbaselmiamibeach.com.

• The world is getting global; we as artists need to think outside of Atlanta. In addition, in Atlanta there is a
closed circle of interest in local people. It seems to take 5+ years to build up a body of work and get attention
in Atlanta. So start trying to get into shows, getting awards, and getting grants in other states and all of a
sudden the Atlanta folks will start paying attention. :)

• At present, Susan feels there is an "art investment bubble"--photography is still considered "reasonably
priced" compared to other artworks (if you consider $45,000 reasonably priced).

• Contemporary photographers' major competition right now, in Susan's words, is "vintage work done by dead
white men." What this means is that auctions are selling works by long-gone but famous photographers (at
astronomical prices!) and buyers are not looking to buy contemporary work or work by budding
photographers right now, because they are being financially realistic (they're selling what's being bought).

o One benefit of this interest in vintage work is a renewed appreciation for black and white
photography.
o One drawback is that photojournalism and portraiture work are not being appreciated as much at
the moment.
o Some galleries are even holding on to work by older photographers, not selling or showing it,
while they wait for the work to go up in value [or, in this note taker's words: waiting for the
photographer to die. :( ].
• So, the question becomes: How can I get my work out there in the meantime? Answer: start networking, get outside of your bubble (those in Atlanta that know your work), try to get into shows in other cities/states.

• Go see photography shows in town! Go hear photography lectures in town! You need to know what is going on in the world of photography.

• Go to gallery shows in town and take notes on what they show. If your work would fit there, contact them later. DO NOT talk to them at openings, as they do not have time for such talk then.

• Although buyers/collectors are more focused on vintage work right now, they DO still want to know who is doing hot/current work.

• Susan brought several books that collectors are looking at to see what's hot. They are: reGeneration: 50
Photographers of Tomorrow, The Photograph as Contemporary Art, aipad (The Association of International
Photography Art Dealers), New Perspectives in Photography, Collecting Contemporary, and The Art of
Collecting Photography. So, the hot photographers are in these books. However, once you're in there, you're
practically past tense (you're not hot and budding anymore because you're IN there, so clearly you've been
noticed). Said Susan, "what'll be tomorrow is being sown today." (That's us, by the way.)
• Today there are more women doing photography than men.
• Thematic trends Susan sees in photography today are:
o the idea of absence (example: Miriam Backstrom)
o mothers and children (examples: Melissa Ann Pinney, Julie Blackmon, Justine Kurland)
o a neomodernist point of view--architecture, colors (example: Frank Breuer just did a series of
telephone poles--that's it)
o constructed scenes in which roles are played out and some truth is revealed through this
fabrication--the photographer acts as the director
o there is also some crossover into digitally enhanced scenes
o China--anything of China is considered exotic, emotional, and intellectual
o hybrids--the still-life landscape or the portrait as a social landscape (so, although portraiture is not hot right now, some portraiture hybrids are)
o surveys--series--OCD behavior: numerous photographs of different examples of the same object done the same way in the same style, usually over a long period of time (examples: Jason Walker, Julian Montage's stray shopping carts, The Bechers's 283 water towers)
o children still fascinate buyers
o sex still (always) sells--usually cloaked in technique or social commentary
o technique is played with--images in which the hand of the artist can be seen
• Susan says these are the current themes, and some people are ready to move on, but she doesn't know in what
direction.

• Medium trends Susan sees in photography today:
o collectors will not buy mounted photographs because there are archival problems (peeling)--they prefer prints
o there is a lot of complaint about bad digital black and white prints (so if you're doing this, learn how to do it right!).
o more large black and white prints (20 x 30 feet)
o editions of ten or fewer, with maybe 1­2 artist proofs (the prices go up as the prints get sold)
o archival quality is very important, especially of digital work (tip: if you are printing digital images archivally, throw that in your "medium" line in lists of artist, title, medium, etc. when showing)
• Susan brought many slides to show us of some examples by current hot photographers. Many of these people have studied art history and know their contemporary artists. The images she showed us were by the following artists:
o Elinor Carucci (painterly portraiture)
o Katy Grannan (portraiture in the landscape--vulnerability)
o Collier Schorr (documentary, fictionalized hybrid portraits--constructed--narrative ambiguity)
o Zwelethu Mthethwa (hybrid photojournalistic portraits--marginalized lives)
o Roger Ballen (constructed scenes--portraiture/social landscape--the homeless in the rooms they live in)
o David LaChappelle (fashion photography)
o Marcus & Mert (fashion photography)
o Nikki S. Lee (constructed identities in social landscapes--she becomes part of a society/group and then photographs herself as part of that group in their landscape with them)
o Trish Morrissey (restaging family history with family members playing the same roles they are in the old photographs--hair, clothes the same--a sort of documentary aesthetic)
o Kelli Conneli (digitally constructed scenes--one person playing two people in the photos--asks "what's reality?" but also shows truths of friendship)
o Anthony Goicolea (digitally puts multiple copies of himself in scenes--always a schoolboy theme)
o Loretta Lux (childen, with digital manipulation of them in front of the background0
o Ingnar Krauss (portraits of young people in Russian prisons)
o Desiree Dolron (emulates style and subject matter of great master paintings)
o Melissa Ann Pinney (children's portraiture, mothers and children)
o Larry Sultan (nudes on pornography movie sets)
o Nobuyoshi Araki (sexual/sensual)
o Thomas Ruff (pornography stills downloaded [or in this note taker's words: stolen] from the internet and manipulated)
o Bill Henson (very dark prints, chiaroscuro--usually Lover's Lane teenagers)
o Mona Kuhn (hybrids of still-life objects up front in focus with out-of-focus nudes in background)
o Marco Breuer (textured abstracts)
o Gerald Slota (scratches and cuts photographs)
o Tacita Dean (found images covered with inscriptions and scratches, rephotographed--creates imagined narratives)
o Vik Muniz (duplicates of others' work in chocolate, dust, etc.)
o David Hilliard (panoramic triptychs)
o Vera Lutter (camera obscura--an old form of photography that creates only one unique print, no multiple copies)
o Alec Soth (survey: "Sleeping by the Mississippi"--places and people all along the river)
o Celia Shapiro (survey: last meals of death row prisoners)
o Shizuka Yokomizo (survey: strangers she calls up and tells to turn on a light and stand in their window but do not come out to meet her)
o Sarah Hobbs (series of constructed scenes--psychological pathology)
o Nancy Floyd (women with guns)
• If you are doing work you don't particularly like (but, say, maybe you are doing it for a friend or it pays well), do it under a pseudonym so that your fine art work will be separate from this work.

• Always experiment! Don't stick to one style. (Think Richard Wegman: as much as he might want to do something else, he's stuck producing more and more photographs of his dogs.) Have fun with it! Try different things.

• Hotels buying décor (art for the walls of their hotel rooms/lobbies) is big business (but here's where the

pseudonym might come in handy).
• Aperture looks at portfolios in January and July only.

• Someone asked Susan's opinion on festivals/fairs (because for those you can't edition, you have multiple copies). Susan juries them often (she says she trying to raise the quality of photography in them) and says that for some artists it's hard to sit there and have people ignore you, but if that's something you're interested in, do it. She suggests this is another use for a pseudonym, or else you can do the festivals/fairs in other cities/states where no Atlanta gallery owners are likely to walk up on you. HOWEVER, she did once buy a photograph from a guy at an art fair whose work is now selling for thousands of dollars per piece.

• SET GOALS, and always remind yourself of your goals. Stay focused.

If any of this is something you are interested in, I highly recommend that you google these artists' names and look at some samples of their work (I got the correct spellings from Susan).