Wide-angle lens

The language of photography is familiar to a vast audience through exhibitions, books, advertising, pop culture and family photos. In the era of mobile phones and digital cameras, its cross-platform and democratic nature makes it one of the most open artforms and part of daily visual culture. Throughout the history of photography, practitioners have been pushing the boundaries of what it means to make a still photographic image, experimenting by deconstructing and re-imagining the form. From the 1960s onwards, artists and theorists have engaged in highly developed critical debates on the social role of photography, and the medium has been given the opportunity to rethink itself and move on from binding definitions. Curators have since experimented with a new freedom to integrate vernacular photography, anonymous utilitarian documents, snapshots and lost archives into exhibitions, alongside the works of known photographers, disrupting the perceived hierarchy between high and low art. Meanwhile in the wider world, the broadsheets, supplements and magazines that had made journalism and documentary photography such essential forces have begun to decline as a result of the proliferation of broadcast media – Internet and television. The effect of photo-sharing websites and new agencies, open to any photographer selling images cheaply and variable or no copyright restrictions, has destabilised the careers of photojournalists. Several have looked to the art world to diversify their practice.
Re-positioning
As an artform, photography has a history and critical context that has often been regarded as separate from that of fine arts: at one point it was accused of bringing about the death of painting. This position was reflected in the UK arts infrastructure, led by the Arts Council of Great Britain in the 1970s, which fought for photography as a separate artform, as championed by organisations like Creative Camera, Photographers Gallery and Ffotogallery. The past two decades have seen this change through the assimilation of photographic and fine arts practice, driven partly by curatorial practice but also by the increased public accessibility of the medium. Semantics have also developed, and the differentiation between ‘photographers’ and ‘artists’ is blurred. Art institutions now exhibit photography as a normal element of general programming, as its potential to attract a non-arts audience is well known: photography is often used within significant engagement and participatory projects.
In the past, photography galleries tended to emerge out of darkrooms and professional production spaces. But many previously specialist photographic galleries have either ceased trading or now work to an expanded remit which includes moving image and digital media. The increased availability of digital technology and low-cost printing for home production, and the lower level of skills required to use them, has meant that photography organisations are less about offering facilities to professionals for production and more about the presentation of photography through exhibitions and events. However, traditional production spaces, such as the Redeye Photomobile (camera obscura, darkroom and digital), do still exist. This is testament to the magic and alchemy that the craft of photography commands, and demonstrates that there is still a place for the essential techniques. Photographers themselves work across the medium using the most relevant techniques and technologies to attain the outcomes they are aiming for, ranging from highly-polished digital to low-fi hand-built cameras.
New technology hasn’t reduced the field, it has just offered more flexibility and a broader range of techniques. Most significantly, it has enabled communication, sharing, distribution, visibility and increased opportunities. Recently I made a visit to China with Quad to look for photographers to participate in Format International Photography Festival. In preparation I contacted Chinese photographers on the photo sharing website flickr.com. Without a presence on the Internet they would not have been visible outside China. Two from this meeting were commissioned to create new work for Format09 International Photography Festival ‘Photocinema’ exhibition. Both photographers work with film cameras and a darkroom, but they have a website and images on various photo/social networking sites.

Galleries and beyond
Put the words ‘photo gallery’ into Google and the majority of links you find will be for web-based activity. Armed with digital cameras people are empowered, and the Internet offers them the opportunity for presentation on a global scale by linking with hybrid networks across the globe. Whether by tagging photos, embedding a gallery into a blog or linking flickr to Facebook, there are endless permutations linking virtual and real-space networks. Take the current unrest in Iran for example. Bloggers and citizen journalists have found ways around the Internet blockades, posting images and reporting from the front line to build an alternative to the general mediated news. So how can a gallery or photography festival relate to this fissure of activity and the vastness of production?
These times are healthy for photography in galleries with new built spaces opening to house expanding organisations such as Quad, Open Eye, Photographers Gallery, Impressions, Street Level and others. Alongside the building-based institutions are photography festivals and networks such as Format International Photography Festival, Brighton Photography Biennial, Hereford Photography Festival, Rhubarb Rhubarb, Photo-Festivals and Redeye Photography Network, which aim to debate contemporary concerns, and create multiple opportunities for audiences and practitioners from portfolio reviews, commissions, conferences, events and workshops.
Photography festivals should be ambassadors of international and local collaboration, catalysts and motivators for practitioners, pioneers of cultural activity. They should provide an international meeting place online or in-place and an interruption of the everyday: at best they are a laboratory of the future and a place to experiment. Many people internationally only access the online presence. Since the first edition of the Format International Photography Festival in 2005, audiences have been in excess of 100,000 per festival, proving that there is a mass audience for photography and a desire for debate. One of the festival projects, Mob Format, invites people to send images on festival themes. Their submissions create an evolving exhibition throughout the festival, which are also viewable online – we received over 2,000 submissions for Format09. Photography festivals have an important role to play in the arts ecology: they have an international reach, they can take risks and include unexpected elements in their programmes, they are a catalyst for activity and they provide a place to see what is happening in the field.