rxmd
May contain traces of nut
Hi,
I have been meeting with a couple of photographer friends here in Uzbekistan. We've been having a lot of wild ideas about photo projects. Given that I am the only Westerner in our little circle here, of course the first question I get asked is if it is possible to get Western sponsorship for local photo projects. However, I have next to no experience with that.
For example, one project was to document the gradual "drifting apart" of the Soviet Union's successor states in Central Asia. Most of my acquaintances here are photojournalists who were trained in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s and whose work was then dominated by a common style informed partly by the needs of propaganda. Now sixteen years of independence have obviously left their marks on the individual persons as well, and the diverging conditions in the individual republics would necessarily influence the way a photographer views the world around him. So one would take a couple of photographers, maybe some Uzbeks, Kazakhs and Kyrghyz, and send them to photograph a common sujet - maybe scenes from one city here in Central Asia, and correlate the different views of the suject with the unified view they would have had 20 years ago. That way, one could see how the economic and societal disintegration of the post-Soviet space reflects itself in the mind and worldview of a photographer moving within society. This is just the general idea of course, developed after a couple of bottles of vodka, but I rather like it.
The result should be an exhibition, presented locally (ideally in the countries of origin of the photographers) and possibly in the West as well, an artbook (which we could produce here in Tashkent with good quality and at low prices), and ideally a semi-permanent Internet exhibition.
The big problem is that this kind of project is utterly impossible to realize without financial backing of some sort, because these people have practically no money at all. On the other hand, this could be presented to sponsors as supporting artists suffering from the after-effects of the post-Soviet collapse, which is effectively what it is. And ultimately this can be realized relatively cheaply in Central Asia because transportation costs etc. are very low.
Unfortunately I have little experience with trying to get sponsor support. Do some of you have experience in this field and could give me a couple of pointers, to possible sponsors or to others with experience in the field? Do you have other practical tips if one were to organize such a thing?
Philipp
I have been meeting with a couple of photographer friends here in Uzbekistan. We've been having a lot of wild ideas about photo projects. Given that I am the only Westerner in our little circle here, of course the first question I get asked is if it is possible to get Western sponsorship for local photo projects. However, I have next to no experience with that.
For example, one project was to document the gradual "drifting apart" of the Soviet Union's successor states in Central Asia. Most of my acquaintances here are photojournalists who were trained in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s and whose work was then dominated by a common style informed partly by the needs of propaganda. Now sixteen years of independence have obviously left their marks on the individual persons as well, and the diverging conditions in the individual republics would necessarily influence the way a photographer views the world around him. So one would take a couple of photographers, maybe some Uzbeks, Kazakhs and Kyrghyz, and send them to photograph a common sujet - maybe scenes from one city here in Central Asia, and correlate the different views of the suject with the unified view they would have had 20 years ago. That way, one could see how the economic and societal disintegration of the post-Soviet space reflects itself in the mind and worldview of a photographer moving within society. This is just the general idea of course, developed after a couple of bottles of vodka, but I rather like it.
The result should be an exhibition, presented locally (ideally in the countries of origin of the photographers) and possibly in the West as well, an artbook (which we could produce here in Tashkent with good quality and at low prices), and ideally a semi-permanent Internet exhibition.
The big problem is that this kind of project is utterly impossible to realize without financial backing of some sort, because these people have practically no money at all. On the other hand, this could be presented to sponsors as supporting artists suffering from the after-effects of the post-Soviet collapse, which is effectively what it is. And ultimately this can be realized relatively cheaply in Central Asia because transportation costs etc. are very low.
Unfortunately I have little experience with trying to get sponsor support. Do some of you have experience in this field and could give me a couple of pointers, to possible sponsors or to others with experience in the field? Do you have other practical tips if one were to organize such a thing?
Philipp
nksyoon
Well-known
Suggest you try asking at www.lightstalkers.org, a community of documentary photographers.
R
RML
Guest
Maybe this is useful: http://www.fiftycrows.org/ ?