VoxPhotographs Weblog

This week, five stellar fine art photographers joined me for supper. Every other month I offer a “salon” evening in my Portland condo for a small group of Maine’s fine art photographers to try and recreate the days when people actually talked to each other face-to-face about something they were all passionate about – art, literature, music or philosophy.

For me, it’s all about fine art photography and there’s nothing I’d rather spend the evening doing than talking about it with the people in Maine who are actually making the photographs.

This time around I brought together Melonie Bennett, Felice Boucher, Rose Marasco, Jack Montgomery and Denise Froehlich, pictured in this order above. Each artist carted a sample of their work to the gallery and in this picture all five samples can be seen on the walls.

The fine art photography community in Maine needs to strengthen its impact and one way to do this is to make sure these artists know each other, learn from each other and move forward together to make an impact on the world’s art scene. At these salons the photographers who gather are so hungry for connection no introductions are necessary. Surrounded by their work in an intimate little group show, they dive right in getting to know each other and discussing the images on the wall.

So, what’s in it for me? Frankly – there needs to be a cohesive  fine art photography community in order for there to be a fine art photography market in Maine, so building the market also involves building the community. Without a community, there’s nothing to build visibility for. And I’m determined to do just that. I talk to the artists about creating dynamic websites, entering competitions, getting their work OUT THERE and supporting it non-stop including NOT donating work when requested by endless organizations that assume art is free and artists live by air alone. Demand to be paid and paid properly for your decades of shooting and level of expertise. I talk to them about culling their work for the very best pictures they can offer so we can build a fine art photography community that is second to none in this country. Trust me, the talent in this state is world-class. So let’s take it to the world.

So the three hours we spent around the dinner table talking about photography in general and these photographers’ work specifically is worth its weight in gold – for us all.

Getting connected – building a market. Getting visibility, selling fine art photographs. There’s a process here and the future is today.

This entry was posted on May 21, 2010 at 12:03 pm and is filed under OUT THERE - MAINE PHOTOGRAPHER SPOTLIGHT . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.