Who is my work for? At the start of this module, I took a look at some other practitioners to see where they sit on the Art and Commerce spectrum (Fig: 1). It is worth revisiting this now that my WIPP is coming to a conclusion.
My work has steadily evolved from the fairly glossy editorial illustration of text to my current practice. Peers have commented on the poetic nature of my images and Colin has also mentioned the romanticism inherent in the images that I am making. The work is moving more towards a more concept based practice of longer form projects. This evolution of my work creates new opportunities to share it however, it also creates a challenge in navigating a world that I am not used to.
Have aimed to share my work with established publications interested in narrative based photography. A positive outcome from this was through small book publisher, I will be producing a small book based on my images of Watford over the coming weeks with ‘Out of Place Books’ (Fig: 2,3&4). The values of Out of Place really align and resonate with the goals of my work and the narrative journey that I set out to construct in my exploration of place: ‘Out of Place Books’ specialise in “exploring ideas about place; how we understand and experience our environments and how we define them” (Neophytou, 2020). They produce a number of publications about places throughout the year and promote them to an established based of people interested in photography of spaces and learning about environment. This creates a great opportunity to raise my own profile and showcase my current practice to a targeted audience interested in my work.
It also provides a valuable testing bed for future opportunities of ways to promote my work to new audiences through publication. My relationship with the photobook has also evolved during the MA. Initially, I was skeptical of the scope of such books, owing to limited runs and niche demographics willing to consume them. However, I feel that it is important to stop considering the book as an end of itself and more as a means to move on to other ways of disseminating the work. The right photobook creates a platform, a certain gravitas and opportunity use it as a foot in the door to other ways broaden the audience. For example, BBC’s ‘In Pictures’ platform (2020) regularly runs photo images from photographers who have books and exhibitions releasing (Fig: 5). This creates a valuable opportunity to further the reach of a limited audience platform, such as a photobook, by placing in front of a larger media audience online.
Early on in the module, I also discussed the work of Awoiska van der Molen. Her work features regularly in publications and also exhibition (Fig: 6) and is also an area that I could see development towards. Additionally, van der Molen is represented by the Annet Gelink Gallery in Amsterdam (Fig: 7) that provides other avenue for work to be viewed and disseminated. A gallery would also create that kind of gravitas seen from the photobook, to build further audiences and opportunities for maintaining practice. This is an area I would need to investigate further as I am not familiar with the gallery system however, there are clear steps to take before even being considered for such opportunities. My small publication will still be a world away from this kind of profile.
Bibliography
BBC, 2020. In Pictures. [Online] Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in_pictures
[Accessed 3 December 2020].
Neophytou, C., 2020. Out of Place Books. [Online]Available at: https://www.outofplacebooks.com/ [Accessed 03 December 2020].