the advantages to rummaging in your archives
Monday, March 23, 2015 at 10:26AM 
rich email image • click to embiggen
As you should already know, over the past month or so I have been rummaging around in my picture archive. In part, I have been doing so in order to make sense of what I have been doing, picture making wise, over the past 15 years. That is, even though I know what I have been doing, I had a desire to see (literally) how it all fit together.
I believe I discovered an answer to that desire and it's reflected in the umbrella logo - life squared, as seen in above email image - I have developed for all of my work. This logo does not replace the names for my different bodies of work. It is simply the title under which they all reside.
That result aside, the other reason for rooting around in the archive was to find pictures for various of my known bodies of work, pictures which were scattered about (chronologically) throughout the archive. The result of that exercise is that I now have separate folders for each of my bodies of work into which will go all future additions to those various bodies of work.
The unexpected result of the search and compile endeavor was that a couple of unknown bodies of work emerged from the archive. Case in point is the places to sit work. While I was well aware of having made a fair number of pictures which included chairs / place to sit, I really hadn't consider that there was a cohesive body of work just waiting to emerge.
But here's the really good part - the first selects of pictures for that collection included chairs / place to sit from a wide variety of geographic locations. And that collection remains intact and will be added to over time. That written, in the process of finding / selecting pictures for that collection, I realized that another subset collection emerged comprised of Adirondack-only chairs and places to sit.
After assembling that collection, I came to the conclusion that that body of work would be of interest to regional galleries, art institutions, and publications. Consequently, I created a rich email (as seen above) and sent it out to the directors of regional galleries, art institutions and publications. As expected, there was interest and last week I received notice that, at their quarterly meeting this week, the Gallery Committee from the Lake Placid Center for the Arts wished to view the work for a possible solo exhibition in their Fine Arts Gallery.
Hence, really good part ~ PT.II. The committee prefers to view work and related information (artist statement, resume / bio, etc.) from online sources projected on a big screen. My choice was to created an entry on my blog like the linked places to sit entry above or to do something I have been wanting to do for a couple years but been putting off for one reason or another.
I chose the latter option which resulted in this.
The site meets my immediate need but I will be adding additional galleries of all of my various bodies of work. There will also be a Recent Work Gallery which might be of interest to those who don't like reading my various bloviations.
All of that written, I am please beyond measure that I undertook the archive rummaging endeavor. The advantages and rewards of doing it have been many. I would highly recommend this endeavor to any "serious" picture maker. You never know what the results might be and you don't even need to buy postage stamps to send out an email to places which might be interested in exhibiting your pictures - seriously, don't sell yourself short, let others be the judge of the possibilities of your work.
FYI, once you get the hang of the SquareSpace proprietary software, making and maintaining a site is really quite easy. And, the only cost is a relatively paltry $8.00USD/month. IMO, it's a good value and it is well worth the effort to organize and present your work.
Reader Comments (1)
Each gallery is really nice... well done. A joy to view. Nice understated interface and layout too.
It also makes clear that good picture editing is a skill quite different than being a good photographer. Making order out of a multitude of images is a challenge for many but obviously not for you.