LOOK3, Shoot What You Love
I recently attended the LOOK3 photo festival in Charlottesville, VA for the first time. This is definitely a festival I'd been wanting to attend since I first heard of it several years ago. Here are some pictures and thoughts on some of the stuff I saw in the past week.
-I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't really know Alex Webb's work. His was the first gallery I walked into. Alone. I was there a day early to see the TREES talk with David Doubilet, so I got some exploring out of the way early, without a thousand people around me, which was great. I was blown away. In fact, my first response to seeing all this work was, "damn, I should just quit. there's no way I'll ever be this good". I'm not quitting, but damn, was I inspired.
-I loved being able to meet random people, hang out with them, and then meet the people they know, collect business cards so you can look at their work later. It really is an inspiring week to meet a ton of people whose work you've never seen before.
Pedestrian walks past Bruce Gilden's outdoor gallery.
Donna Ferrato answers some questions. She was awesome.
Outdoor cafe along the Charlottesville Mall, downtown...
-What struck me a day or two into the festival is not only that there are an incredible array of photographers out there that you'll never know, but that the great ones are shooting what they love. Most of what you see is not assignment work. And if it is (like in the case of Lynsey Addario, it's work that's come about because she doggedly pursued an issue that she cares about. The assignments came later). It's that simple. Shoot what you love, even if it's taking pictures of your daughter with random animals, like Robin Schwartz. While it may not be your cup of tea, it's hers. And you can tell she loves it because her images are wonderful. Over and over, this theme repeated itself. During the Works or Shots projections at the end of Fri/Sat nights, I saw work about where children sleep, paint splatter, Zambia's space program, The Dakotas, and an Autistic son, among others. It was all incredible work, b/c I believe the photographer was shooting what they cared about, and not looking for what publishes or sells but just shooting what moves them. It's an extremely simple lesson, but very difficult to apply. How do you suddenly ask yourself, "What do I love? Now go shoot it." I think you need to just let it happen. For me, I'm curious about many things. I have many ideas I think would be interesting to explore visually. I also have a tendency to wonder whether the particular idea is marketable. Maybe I should stop worrying about that and just shoot and see. Maybe the philosophy of "shoot first, ask questions later" applies here.
cookout/picnic at the McGuffeyArt Center
Sam Abell sighting! I love his work.
-Collectives and Collaboratives are the new trend. It's been so for a while, I suppose. The agency is "dead". Luceo, Grain, Prime...just a few of the collectives I've had a chance to look at either before LOOK3 or because of LOOK3. The festival was a great opportunity to meet these people and hear what they had to say. Again, though, you see their work, and it's simply doing what they love, and then finding other people that compliment them and then finding strength in numbers. Maybe it's a model that will stick. At least it gives hope to many freelancers like myself.
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