How It Works?

Several decades ago I attended a Business of Art workshop organized by the art department at a local college.  The presentation by a CPA on record keeping, expenses, and taxes was worthwhile, but the advice offered on marketing yourself as an artist did not seem as useful.

To become better known as an artist, panelists from the local art world suggested cultivating curators and gallery owners by periodically sending them slides (the preferred pre-digital medium of the time) of your work for review.  The reasoning was that this would lead to exhibition opportunities.  An artist on the panel told us that he had a half-dozen sets of slides that he kept in constant circulation to stay on people’s radar screens.

There was time and expense involved in taking photographs, having sets of slides made, and packaging and mailing them along with a CV and a cover letter, but this was considered professional best practice.  A prominent local gallery owner who recommended it said that it was important for him to review work that artists submitted, and that he always made time for it.

So for a number of years afterward I dutifully assembled and sent out sets of slides of my work to curators and gallery directors and so on.  I would get them back weeks or months later with a form letter thank you, though sometimes people kept my slides and did not mail them back in the pre-paid envelope (aka “SASE” = self-addressed stamped envelope) that I had included.  But nothing else happened.  No one ever offered me a show after seeing my slides, and keeping people informed of my work at my own expense in the end seemed poor advice.

So how does one get shows?  In my own case, my first museum show happened when I went to a poker game with my father and the guy sitting across from me turned out to be a museum curator.  When I told him I was a photographer, he said that he was organizing a photography show and he invited me to submit my work.  Voilà.  Bingo.

The more I think about this, the more my conclusion is that in the art world, if you have to ask, then the answer is no.  But if they ask you that is a different thing.  Interestingly, the gallery owner who suggested self-promotion told stories about how he had found some of the artists he represented, and none of his recruits came from viewing slides of their work.  Instead, he had seen their work in shows in Seattle or San Fransisco or New York.

To be sure, there must be intrepid independent gatekeeper eyes out there who confidently follow their own judgement.  But one has the feeling that most curators and gallery owners are not big risk takers, the general atmosphere being the “guarded professionalism” Robert Adams mentions.

Thinking about it, this all sounds a bit grim, and I suspect that not much has changed in today’s digital age.  Today it is easy to send off a digital portfolio via the Internet, but who is actually looking at the spam in their inbox? 

When I look around at websites for photography organizations, many seem to accept digital submissions for virtual gallery shows.  But I wonder about the audience.  Do people — especially gatekeepers like curators and gallery owners — look at work shown in virtual galleries?  Likewise, there seem to be many portfolio reviews, in-person as well as virtual, but what happens as a result?  Are most postulants’ careers advanced?  It certainly seems possible that you may get valuable feedback, but it probably depends on the reviewer and whether or not they are in a position and inclined to help you advance your career.  And you have to pay for a portfolio review, just as when you enter a photobook contest. 

Speaking of photobook contests, looking through a list of them recently, it struck me that the majority are for dummy / first books than for already published books.  I suppose this makes sense given that the sponsor is often a publisher.  The prize for the winner is a published book, and the organizer / publisher gets to review submissions to feed their publishing business.  Plus they can shape the book to fit their design preferences.

But I digress…

To conclude, then, it seems to be an insider’s game.  If you are a young Stephen Shore, you are invited to show at the Metropolitan Museum not because you submitted slides but because you have been hanging out at the Factory with Andy Warhol.  But if you are an unknown photographer named Francesca Woodman making the rounds in New York and showing people your work, no one is going to spend their social capital on you.