Portfolio Clinic – Anna and Stella – F2F Workshop

For my portfolio Clinic I selected Anna-Maria Pfab and Stella Baraklianou as tutors that had seen different work in progress portfolios from different MA modules. They had both been involved in arranging exhibitions and exhibiting work which is an important distribution channel for my practice. Prior to the clinic I decided to prepare a portfolio of images that covered recent fine art work from my practice. To avoid having too many images in my portfolio I decided to select a representative 3 or 4 images from each body of work fine-art-portfolio-18th-february-2018. The images were presented in a A3 Landscape portfolio book. During any reviews with a gallery I would also take my iPad with a larger selection of images from each body of work if there was a need to discuss in more detail.

My plan for the review was to get general feedback on the portfolio ahead of the reviews on Monday and Tuesday.

I received a number questions during the clinic

Why only one image on the right side of the page?

I decided not to pair images because I wanted to discuss individual images on their own merit. I can see how this did not allow Anna or Stella to determine how discerning I might be when grouping images to tell a more expansive story. My decision was partly a response to a book review with Mark Power where every page contained and image and in his opinion this became overwhelming hence my decision to allow images to breath.

What is the purpose of your portfolio?

My portfolio was constructed to showcase my different bodies of work and drive a discussion with gallery owners who expressed an interest in seeing my work following initial contact with selected galleries. I intend to take an iPad along with the portfolio book to provide more examples if during the meeting there is a need to explore a particular body of work in more detail. They complemented me on the overall quality of the portfolio book used to present the work.

Your work should reflect you?

I was not sure how to react to this comment because the work driven from my interaction with my local environment. Photographically I cover a diverse population of stories in my bodies of work and I can understand how that broad spectrum of work could make it difficult for anyone to start to identify stylistic cues across my work that other photographers on the MA such a Josie Purcell with her Cyanotypes or Jedd Griffin with his Bee and pesticide inspired work. Though I believe there are some common threads that can be identified in my work. I typically work with muted colour palette rather than using oversaturated colours within my compositions. I play with the concept of time in a non-linear manner and by this I mean sometimes I an exploring the use of time as small time slices who during is less that 1 second other, for other bodies of work I am interested in extruding time through the use of long exposures or rephotography. 

 How to make your work more visible?

Anna and Stella suggest a number of possible alternative ways to engage with audiences.

• The first was to submit work to open calls for different shows. This is something I have done in the though I could spent more time actively submitting work for open calls. During the later part of the the last module I have entered open calls with organisations such as  Lens Culture (http://fineart.photography/lens-culture-review/) I will now continue to look for those opportunities such as the recent open call for Krakow that I entered in January.
• The second is to produce a magazine to share with people who I would like to see my work. Based on my experience of producing the electric charging zine http://fineart.photography/week-13-looking-forward-research/ creating a zine would be a logical progression though I would like to up the production value around future zines to match the quality of the portfolio books.
• The third was to collaborate with other artists on projects. Given the fact I have a full time job alongside the MA this is probably an activity that will need to wait until the end of the MA as currently I could not devote the level of time I feel is required to execute a collaborative project.