I’m in. Who else?
I was accepted to the ACP Portfolio Review (yay!). Who else will be there?
And, for those who’ve participated in the past, what did you do to prepare? Any wisdom to share? What kinds of questions did you ask? What kinds of questions did jurors ask you?
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Jason, I was accepted as well, and have similar questions…
Todd
I went to ACP last year and Fotofest in Houston prior to that. There are a number of guides for preparing for these events. Mary Virginia Swanson seems to be the most often cited, so I’ll try too find her guide and post it here.
Alrighty, here are the links. The first is a PDF, and it’s the information they sent to us in a packet for Fotofest:
http://www.griffinmuseum.org/downloads/Focus%20Reviews%2006.pdf
The second is also a PDF, and this is the first time I’ve seen it, but Photo Lucida is supposed to be fantastic, so I’ll assume it’s pretty great information:
http://www.photolucida.org/images/PortfolioReviewGuide.pdf
This final link is to an audio interview with MVS about the reviews. I haven’t listened to it in quite awhile, but I think it was pretty good:
http://maceditionradio.com/index.php?module=Pagesetter&func=viewpub&tid=3&pid=127
If anyone has any particular questions not addressed here, please feel free to e-mail or call me and we can discuss your particular concerns. I have a lot of advice on what NOT to do, since I’ve done a lot of it myself.
Ooo… what should I NOT do??
Also, thanks for the info.
Hello! I’m not a member of PA, just a reader… I go to GSU, and I was accepted to the review as well, so I’m following this thread with interest.
Thanks for those links! And yeah, please feel free to share a list of DO NOTS. I’m stellar at stumbling into those.
Julie
Hey guys, I was also accepted! Can’t wait to see you guys back in Atlanta!
Well what the heck, I’ll post something not to do. Might as well.
One thing I’d suggest not doing is showing a variety of work. I think most reviewers are interested in a consistency of vision, especially a cohesive body of work. I took two bodies of work, and essentially showed everyone everything I brought. Neither were all that good, and the better of the two made the other series look especially bad. I don’t mean you can’t *take* more than one body of work, but taking everything into the review could do more harm than good, the way I see it. Then again, I was an (essentially) unsuccessful reviewee, so that was very likely not my only problem.
Also, don’t waste the reviewers’ time. The ACP reviews seem to hold a little less potential than the big time reviews like Santa Fe, or even PhotoLucide and Fotofest. I can’t say why, because the names seem big enough. Maybe most of the work last year was just not ready (it certainly wasn’t in my case), but I can’t recall hearing anything major coming out of the reviews other than good critiques. I don’t know that critiques alone are worth it. However, what IS good is getting your work directly in front of those major curators, gallerists and buyers, who then will know you and know your work by the time it is ready for exhibition or publication. Ideally, you’d walk into one of these with a completed (or nearly completed) body of work, and walk out with extreme interest from a gallery owner, who might then consider showing the work down the road.
I’m sure I have more, but I’m already rambling, so…
I agree with everything Walker said. I did it last year and brought two bodies of work. I did research on my reviewers and decided which body of work each one might be more interested in. You should walk in with a good understanding of who each of your reviewers are and what kind of work they like. Make sure your prints/portfolio are easy to show, you don’t have a lot of time and you don’t want to waste it unrolling prints. Also prepare some leave behinds (postcards, cd portfolios), most of the reviewers will happily accept them. Just don’t make them to cumbersome, I wouldn’t suggest a full size folder package.
FYI - in the past - several pieces were purchased by a museum curator for their collection, someone got gallery representation and another got a book deal.
Any suggestions for ideal print size? I plan on bringing a few original collodion plates too, but I will need to figure out how to best present them for ease of handling and viewing. Also, if I had a book concept in mind, would it be a good idea to have a basic book outline to show, or would that be too presumptuous? Would it be better to maybe leave those as prints with an explanation of the book concept?
tv
I’ve taken 20×24s before, and because it wasn’t too big, and was easy to move through quickly, it worked. I wouldn’t bring really small prints unless that’s your actual image size (small being 8×10 or something). Also, I wouldn’t suggest monster, ‘roll-em-out’ prints either, as kyle suggested.
A book outline is great, but are you saying that you have enough images for an entire book? Or that you just like the idea of *one day* having a book. If you’re pitching a book, I think it would make more sense to be nearly ready for publishing, or at least within a couple of months of that time.
As Steve’s said in the past, you never want to hand someone a problem. So on that note, I would be prepared to leave the review with collodion plates that might be slightly damaged. I say this because I know your presentation usually doesn’t involve putting the plates behind glass, and I’m worried you’ll walk in with a plate that they want to handle, but they’ll then need to put gloves on to hold. I think that would probably be annoying to some people, but then again, it might be acceptable for the kind of objects you’re producing.