What a fun week. Working with each of several photographers and other exciting efforts this week has been a blast. Combined they’re a home run.
I mean, come on, I got to edit Ian Martin’s body of work about poor, white South Africans into a book; helped two photographers who work at newspapers move beyond newspaper ways of developing stories and making pictures; introduced Susan Seubert for her talk at the Portland Art Museum on behalf of the museum's Photography Council; finalized an edit of two portfolios for Michael Rubenstein; edited Amiran White's compelling take from Bhopal; talked to Daniel Wakefield Pasley about developing some projects together; began to work with a photographer who’s sitting on a ship off the coast of Africa; answered several other queries; had a pleasant lunch at Higgins with my former boss from the Oregonian, Randy Cox.
Nicole Wolf wrote that the edit/sequence I did for her to show to several galleries in the Northeast was a hit. She secured shows and more than one gallery wants to represent her work. That is a grand slam. Congratulations Nicole.
Good friend Vince Musi also connected me with the next, unique, Look Festival of the Photograph effort, set for this summer. (Stay tuned for more about that.) Vince is on the Festival’s board of advisers and is the master of ceremonies for that stellar coming-together of photographic voices. Vince is an amazing photographer. See a q&a with him here. And he’s lucky enough to be married to Callie Shell.
Later today, I’ll finally dive into Robbie McClaran’s work. We met almost a month ago to talk about his work and an approach to an edit; he sent me more than 1,000 photographs. But I’ve been wading through deadline-driven projects and waiting until I had a big chunk of time to savor his work. I can’t wait. It’ll be like sipping a nice glass of wine.
An underlying theme to all of these conversations and efforts has been: What’s next? It seems everyone is on the same bus as far as redefining the type of work they produce and how they make a living doing it.
As the publishing paradigm shifts we’re all having to rethink things. The choice is to sit in a corner and mope or be aggressive in learning, exploring, trying, moving forward. My goal in helping people is to teach them how to fish in these new waters, not just simply give them fish.
Now the question is whether you can mix baseball and fishing metaphors successfully in one blog post. You be the judge.
Speaking of judging, I’ve also snuck in a few sessions of listening to the judging of newspaper categories in POYi this week. Anyone can sign in and listen. I’ve really enjoyed listening to Scott Strazzante’s comments, in particular.
Next week’s judging panel for POYi general categories is going to be fascinating to hear. Judges are Pablo Corral Vega, Donna DeCesare, Lynn Johnson, Sørn Pagter. I’m eager to hear and see how Sørn thinks about photography. A Danish perspective is bound to be fascinating. He’s the only one of the group I’ve not worked or judged with.
Well, I hope your week was as good as mine. Here’s to the next and the next and the next. Contact me if you want some help making your days better.