Attracting an Audience

As I work on this project I will need to be constantly aware of it’s final destination, a curated exhibition, and who I would like to see the final images that I produce.

Photographs started small.  They were collected, not exhibited.  As photography began to compete with painting, photographs got larger in scale.  But producing a large image meant collaborating with others to produce the print, this brought into question who had made the image.  As the medium of photography grew in the public's estimation, this became less of an issue and more of who could produce the largest paper.  Large photographs became photomurals for commercial and political use, particularly during the war.  Anyone could see an image at an exhibition, it was a shared experience for those who viewed these gigantic images, and created a community among them.

However, early photomurals were pasted rather than hung carefully on walls and unprotected from exposure to light and crowds; many were thrown away after their intended use.  In 1932, the Museum of Modern Art in New York was the first to introduce giant prints to an exhibition and to focus on the scale of photography.  The exhibition was Murals by American Painters and Photographers.  Large prints were not welcomed in the art photography world, with the great Ansel Adams referring to them as 'expensive wallpaper'.  The smaller the image, the closer it was to the photographic original, and therefore, the creative act.

By the early 1980s artists like Jeff Wall and the so-called Pictures Generation, including Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince and Barbara Kruger, developed an interest in large images, bringing them back into acceptance. With mural size images on display today at exhibitions such as the Wildlife Photographer of the Year at the Natural History Museum, London, and the Zanele Muholi's #Vukani/Rise at the Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool.

One of the main aims of exhibitions is to attract audiences, however, understanding those audiences and how to target them, can be intricate task.  The National Portrait Gallery's Exhibitions and Displays Policy states to "maintain, extend and broaden the range of audiences and increase our understanding of those audiences" as one of their main aims.  It is something even the big galleries need to think about.  The Manx National Heritage Museum lists 'think about your audience as number one in their list of how to prepare for an exhibition.  They suggest displays should entertain; give information; be attractive; use strong images; and be safe and accessible.

My project would ideally attract people who are environmentally aware, keep up to date with current affairs and are engaged with the arts.  However, it will also be targeted at those people who have an interest in learning more about lessening their impact on the environment.  My project will provide information on how they can do this, such as how they can use water more efficiently and reduce their waste, especially plastic.

Project Update

I am currently despairing of the grey skies that are a bit of a permanent feature in the North West at the moment.  So I've been in the digital darkroom trying to perfect creating a digital image and printing it.  I've got a couple of digital images now, but am having a few printer problems.  Watch this space and hopefully in a couple of weeks I'll have more successful news to report.