Stupidity Hole

Alright so a few months ago I submitted photos into an exhibition for the first time. It was at Tap Gallery and I didn’t have the money for it, but I did it anyway. How it came about was that, a few months ago, I was considering booking a gallery space for my birthday next year so I was doing some looking around, came across a call for entries into an exhibition Tap was putting on, went “Fuck it” because I’d never done one before and went through the process. Money was very tight for a few weeks but it was worth it. It was satisfying.

I got to give a talk too about my photos, and other artists gave talks regarding their artworks and it was all sorts of pleasant and enjoyable, even when it was darker stuff.

So a few weeks later someone I know was talking with me about submitting into another exhibition done at Tap and run between Tap and Head On Photo Festival, and it’s called ‘Nudes on Tap’. I’d never done nudes before (outside of a photo of myself naked on a street I used to live on) and I was concerned about my ability to do it in a dignified way.

I had some ideas though of getting a photo from the shoulders up and a hand positioned on one of the shoulders, and some other brief ideas that I thought would work. The shoulders up one didn’t as arms don’t bend and extend in the way I’d need to get the photo the exact way I wanted. The other photo worked, but not with the space around it. We could’ve used photos based around the first idea but I they didn’t quite capture what I’d hoped, even though we found a workaround. Still, there’s something to rework the ideas from, which is a plus.

Later on in the evening I took a few quick and unplanned photos with the person, being that I was struck by their beauty in that particular moment, and they were fine and I took a series of photos that I felt captured specific parts of them in a way that was not confronting, but open. The most you see in any of them is a nipple, and they’re about form, shape and body, really.

A few days later I processed the photos that I took that worked, and the person chose the ones they felt worked best to submit. They worked together well enough, and a few days later, before sending off to print, I made sure the person was okay with them. They were, and so off to print the photos went.

We collected them and took them to Tap the following day I think, and it was all easy. Paid to submit them, done.

We went to check all the photos out when the exhibition opened. I think it might’ve been the day of, or a few days after. I can’t remember. Anyway, we went and there was another photographer there, and we started talking. Small stuff, start moving onto the photos.

Rather than say much of anything about the photos I’d taken, he started telling me about how it would’ve been better if I framed them. I told him that I couldn’t afford to get them framed, but I was fine with how they were. He expressed disbelief at this, and told me I could get a frame at some places for cheap, I responded by telling him that it still wasn’t an affordability as paying the amount he advised could mean I’d not be eating a meal. Stunted silence, then he told me that it’d be harder to sell my photos if they weren’t framed. I told him that that was fine and that I’d been doing photography for a while (which, as of somewhere near the end of last year, was twenty-four years), and that I knew what I was doing and I was okay with the photos not being framed. The photographer pushed some more, I repeated what I’d already said about being fine with it. I told him that if someone wanted to take the photos without paying I’d also be fine with it, which I was. It’d be great to earn money from them, but I’d be happy if someone got something out of them.

There was some more back-and-forth and ultimately it went nowhere, and the photographer gave up and started talking about his photos, or rather how good they were and how they were taken, but he didn’t tell me anything about them. And once we were done talking about his work, he walked away. After we left I said to the person with me that I didn’t like them. It was an unpleasant experience.

We returned a few weeks later with two of the person’s friends attending. One met up with us beforehand and the other met up with us there. There was going to be a model and artist talk, and there were things bot the person and I had noticed that we wanted to cover. I was going to use it as an opportunity to better think through my approach and what I wanted to achieve. Anyway, we get there, the photographer was also there and they had been talking for roughly twenty minutes at the friend who was there waiting for us.

The friend who was there said something about the ordering of the photos which they found curious; they were ordered vertically rather than horizontally. The intention I had was horizontal ordering, but it didn’t make much of a difference so long as they were still in an order that made sense, which they were. The person who was there was also fine with it from what I can remember. I think I said as much about how they were meant to be ordered but I was fine with it. It was something along those lines. The photographer told me that I should’ve marked the photos for how they were to be ordered if I wanted them a certain way.

I snapped. I was pretty aggressive in my response and it wasn’t good, and I could’ve been much better about it. I, quite firmly, told the photographer to drop it. He expressed some disbelief. Or maybe it was shock. Anyway, he started backpedalling a bit about what he was saying without really changing it and I kept pushing back, but every time I’d go to explain why I wanted him to drop it and why it was aggravating, he’d cut me off. Eventually it was dropped.

The photographer then went on to talk about his photos and talked about the conditions in which they were taken, but didn’t say anything about his photos. Didn’t say anything about mine, either. Then he walked away to talk to someone else. I apologised to the person and their friends for my reaction. It’s something I need to think more about.

Later on one of the friends started criticising one of the photographer’s photos, and quite audibly too. I defended it, though it was half-hearted as I felt it wasn’t work that offered much of anything.

Later on the person who runs Tap came up and told me that they liked the work, and that someone had come in and really liked it and got something from it, and that was nice. And some other people liked it too. Unfortunately there was no model and artist talk though, so myself, the person and the remaining friend (one left earlier) headed on home.

A week later I looked up the photographer to see what they were about. I saw them referring to the exhibition as a competition. There was a conversation I’d overheard him have with someone else, and he was talking about how much of his work he had sold, and I figured he didn’t care much for the art of it.

I’m not the best photographer in the world, let alone in Sydney. I’ve done my fair share of bad work, and I don’t want to start gatekeeping approach either. I feel that’s not a good way to go about things. If the photographer is making money from their work, that’s awesome. I don’t think that coming to an exhibition and treating it like a competition is a good way to go about things, however. I also don’t think someone who is not going to either talk about their work, or engage in conversation about other people’s, but rather how it should be presented, is someone worth considering. This doesn’t need to be thought of purely in terms of financial success, but there is something to learn from that photographer and their approach. He also excels in terms of business. He knows what he’s doing there, and that is something else to learn from.

When I started writing this, I was going to get into classism in photography, which still is an issue. I was going to get into a few things, but I feel that’s worth something more considered. Mainly, I wanted to get this experience off my chest, because it was a deeply unpleasant one, and I think it says a lot about people’s attitudes.