Creating a Series for Exhibition?

[rkm]

I'd like some input on the critical thinking that goes into choosing a set of images for exhibition.

Have you got any strategies that guide you in choosing a theme, in selecting images, in making more images?

I'm very much in the early stages, shooting a lot, hoping to create something of meaning over time: bodies of work to share with people in some form.

 

[airfrogusmc]

Theres a lot of ways to approach this and many are very valid. For me I usually start with a kinda loose theme and let the work start taking me where I need to go. A lot of the hard work comes in editing. What to include and maybe even more important leave out. Sometimes that means leaving out a really strong image that doesn't fit visually or thematically. Maybe that could be the start of the next project. Ralph Gibson referred to those images as points of departure. I have a show up now "Fleeting Moments" at Calumet Photographic in Chicago until the end of April and its all about those moments when everything come together to make a photograph and just as fast as they are together, they are gone. I had a show a few years back that were casual portraits of people that work or live or both in my community. I tried to use visual clues in the work to give a glimpse into who they really were. I usually have a loose idea and then start working and let it lead me where I need to go.

 

[rkm]

I have this very large idea, based on a chapter of a book I read by Gordon McDonald. A photo series could be based around any one of the "great questions of life's passage", with a goal of provoking thought, not prescribing answers. Is the idea simply too big?



The Great Questions of Life's Passage - Gordon MacDonald

TWENTY SOMETHING
(Preoccupied with clarifying identity)
- What kind of man or woman am I becoming?
- How am I different from my mother and father?
- Where can I find a few friends who will welcome me as I am, and who will offer the family-like connections that I need (or never had)?
- Can I love, and am I lovable?
- What will I do with my life?
- What do I want in exchange for my life's labors?
- What parts of me and my life need correction?
- Around what person or conviction will I organize my life?

THIRTY SOMETHING
(Respinsibilities of life accumulate/ sense of personal freedom compromised/ permanent relationships and commitments are made)
- How do I prioritize the demands being made on my life?
- How far can I go in fulfilling my sense of purpose?
- Who are the people with whom I know I walk through life? (the beginning of the onset of male loneliness)
- What does my spiritual life look like? (questions shift from the ideals of youth to the realities of life)
- Why am I not a better person? (nagging questions of failure)

FORTY SOMETHING
(We can no longer fob off our flaws and failures as youthfulness and inexperience. We are, as they say, grown up)
- Who was I as a child, and what powers back then influence who I am today?
- Why do some people seem to be doing better than I?
- Why am I often disappointed in myself and others?
- Why are limitations beginning to outnumber options?
- Why do I seem to face so many uncertainties?
- What can I do to make a greater contribution?
- What would it take to pick up a whole new calling in life and do the thing I've always wanted to do?
Note: Some give up the fight to achieve lifelong goals and settle into a defensive posture of living. Some seek a sabbatical, evaluate their life journey to this point, and plot a whole new course for the second half of life.

FIFTY SOMETHING
(We have moved across life's middle)
- Why is time moving so fast?
- Why is my body becoming unreliable?
- How do I deal with my failures and successes?
- How can my spouse and I reinvigorate our relationship now that the children are gone?
- Who are these young people wanting to replace me?
- What do I do with my doubts and fears?
- Will we have enough money for the retirement years?

SIXTY SOMETHING
(Relevance/ Significance/ Identity/ Time/ Mortality/ Legacy)
- When do I stop doing the things that have always defined me?
- Why do I feel ignored by a large part of the younger generation?
- Why am I curious about who is listed in the obituary columns, how they died, and what kind of lives they live?
- What is yet to be accomplished, and do I have enough time to do all the things I've dreamed about in the past?
- Who will be around when I die?
- If married, which one of us will go first, and what is it like to say goodbye to someone with whom you have shared so many years of life?
- Are the things I've believed in capable of taking me to the end?
- Is there really life after death?
- What do I regret?
- What are the chief satisfactions of these many years of living?
- What have I done that will outlive me?

SEVENTIES AND EIGHTIES
- Does anyone realize, or even care, who I once was?
- Is my story important to anyone?
- How much of my life can I still control?
- Is there anything I can still contribute?
- Why this anger and irritability?
- Is God really there for me?
- Am I ready to face death?
- When I die, how will it happen?
- Will I be missed, or will the news of my death bring relief?
- Heaven? What is it like?

These are the questions for which one might want to prepare. If they have no answers, they create a fatigue in one's spirit. They slash away at vitality.

 

[airfrogusmc]

I think its ambitious indeed. The big question is how do you show this visually? Maybe you need text with the images. It could involve hundred of photographs. Maybe more but I think if you find a place to start maybe it takes on a life of its own but the important part is starting.

 

[rkm]

I think its ambitious indeed. The big question is how do you show this visually? Maybe you need text with the images. It could involve hundred of photographs. Maybe more but I think if you find a place to start maybe it takes on a life of its own but the important part is starting.

It's potentially a life's work!

All of these questions are universal, but I'm concerned that in trying to communicate these things, it would all become too literal.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

create something of meaning over time: bodies of work to share with people in some form.

You do this first before doing any exhibiting. If you already have a well developed portfolio, selecting images to exhibit that work well together has already been done!

 

[rkm]

I think its ambitious indeed. The big question is how do you show this visually? Maybe you need text with the images. It could involve hundred of photographs. Maybe more but I think if you find a place to start maybe it takes on a life of its own but the important part is starting.

When I read all of Gordnon McDonald's "questions of life", a lot of them relate to identity, relationships, and finding our place in the world. Perhaps it's enough to juxtapose things in the context of life's passage, and all of these questions would be aroused in the viewer?

Here's one seed of an idea. I went through my pictures in the gallery to find anything that had wheels in it...

A young boy, aspirational... seeing what he can do at the skate park )wheels)

A "P Plater" driving a vintage car (wheels). Is it his father's car. What kind of man will he grow to be? Will he be like his father?

Young men on Trikes (wheels). Their kind of too old for this activity, but it doesn't matter because they belong to the pack. They are still connected to the notion of wheels as "fun".

A man at the bus stop, looking kind of dishevelled like the shopping trolley beside him (wheels). He's alone. Does he have a wife or family, like the woman at the distant intersection with the stroller (wheels)? Why are some people winners, why are some losers?

A car as a symbol of freedom, possibilities, exploration.

A similar symbol of freedom, albeit a single man's freedom.

An elderly mother caring for her adult disabled son (wheelchair). Symbolic of life's long burdens.

A different relationship to wheels in old age, accompanied by the indifferent gaze of a young glamorous woman on the poster.

The fate of earthly bodies. How will I die?

 

[rkm]

Is it typical to start with an idea and shoot with it in mind, or just simply shoot and see what you can uncover in hindsight... or a little of both? Find a seed of an idea in your work and continue with it?

 

[Bob Michaels]

Is it typical to start with an idea and shoot with it in mind, or just simply shoot and see what you can uncover in hindsight... or a little of both? Find a seed of an idea in your work and continue with it?

It is an iterative process for me but the series typically comes into focus reasonably early. I am constantly editing with the overall message in mind. That allows me to realize what part of the message I have accomplished and what part I need more photos to accomplish. But everybody tends to work a different way as each of our series is different. I seem to differ from most here as I always have a project or goal in mind when I am photographing. Otherwise I end up with a mixed bag assortment of photos that says nothing.

The thought of "Exhibition" is never a part of the process. Or maybe is always there. It is just not something I think about as a variable. I just always try to do the most cohesive projects. Sometimes they are good enough to be exhibited, sometimes not.

 

[airfrogusmc]

Is it typical to start with an idea and shoot with it in mind, or just simply shoot and see what you can uncover in hindsight... or a little of both? Find a seed of an idea in your work and continue with it?

Its different for everybody. If I'm shooting for say, the moment, I tend to try and see those moments when the elements like leading lines, repeating shapes, geometric design and subject all come together so when I'm shooting those are the things I am trying to see. I tend to try and not think when I'm working. I like to try and start with an almost blank slate other than just trying to see those moments but I have no preconceived ideas of what those will look like.

When shooting say a portrait for my personal work I tend to look for something real in my subject but I have no preconceived idea of what that should look like and instead let the subject reveal something true to me. This is very different from what I do commercially and the approach I have to take with that. When doing my personal work i like to be as far from that as I can get.

I, like Bob, do not think in terms of exhibitions while I'm working. I just work and the project will dictate whether its good enough for an exhibition. When I'm working I give little thought to what form the project will take if it will even take one. The work, to me, is whats important. It will show me what to do.

 

[jsrockit]

Is it typical to start with an idea and shoot with it in mind, or just simply shoot and see what you can uncover in hindsight... or a little of both? Find a seed of an idea in your work and continue with it?

It can be either or maybe even a different way than proposed here.

Lee Friedlander has said in a past interview: “I just work and I throw the pictures in a box that says “X” or whatever, and eventually if the box gets full it merits looking at. I often work on two or three or four of those things at once. People tell me that they all look like they’ve been well thought out, and that’s because I’ve worked on them for so long."

There is NEVER one way to approach photography. You have figure out which one works for you and what you want to accomplish.

After being a person who took the 'figure out the theme and then go photograph it' approach 15 or so years ago, I dropped photography for 10 years after feeling there was nothing to photograph. When I came back to it a few years ago, I've been taking the Friedlander approach (with electronic folders and books instead of boxes) and it's the best thing I could of done. I no longer have any excuses not to go out and photograph. It's been liberating. There's always something to photograph.

 

[Roger Hicks]

The theme looks a bit big to me: too big to shoot, too big to exhibit. And the 'Wheels' series seems too contrived: for me, you don't really tie together a bunch of fairly disparate pictures, several of which do not really say 'wheels' to me.

The first shot -- the trepanned scooter-rider and the scuffed artwork -- strikes me as two pictures; the second as a snapshot of an old car; the third (boys on trikes) is easily the strongest visually but says more about the lads than their wheels; in the shopping trolley/stroller one I had to look very hard indeed to see any wheels; then there's another vintage car shot; then several shots with varyingly messy or obtrusive backgrounds (the wheelchair shot is barely readable); then a nice texture shot.

This suggests two possibilities to me. One is that you can't just cast around among your existing pictures to find images that can be loosely fitted into a preconceived theme. The other is that I have missed the point completely, and that someone else may disagree strongly with my analysis.

The theme may arise from anywhere -- like Bob and airfrogusmc, I tend to let it 'bubble up' from pictures I have already taken, or to try to make it coagulate around a theme I start to see emerging -- but it must be (a) manageable and (b) coherent.

Cheers,

R.

 

[rkm]

Clearly, I have a long way to go, and a lot more shooting to do :/ The images I posted were just thrown up as a "thinking out loud" question of how one might start thinking about this.

Thanks for sharing your processes.

 

[rkm]

Do images belong in a series because they speak about different aspects of the same message, AND because they are tied together somehow on an aesthetic level of lines, shapes, tones?

 

[rkm]

Regardless of the images I posted above, what do you all think of the theme, "Human Wheels", as a means of exploring different stages of life?

 

[MartinP]

I found "On Being a Photographer" to be an interesting read, regarding projects and planning.

 

[Bob Michaels]

Do images belong in a series because they speak about different aspects of the same message, AND because they are tied together somehow on an aesthetic level of lines, shapes, tones?

Yes, no, and maybe. Everyone has different ideas about what elements combine to create a cohesive body of work. That is why it is art not science.

 

[rkm]

Yes, no, and maybe. Everyone has different ideas about what elements combine to create a cohesive body of work. That is why it is art not science.

But for you, Bob, there is always a specific message you are trying to communicate?

 

[Bob Michaels]

But for you, Bob, there is always a specific message you are trying to communicate?

For me, yes. Quite a specific message although it is conveyed subliminally. But that is just me, others have different approaches.

 

[airfrogusmc]

One of the great photo books of all time. Maybe a little insight in this direction might help?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHtRZBDOgag