Shortlisted for the Magnum Showcase/IdeasTap award

Just found out I was shortlisted for the Ideas Tap Magnum Showcase: Family Portrait, unfortunately I did not win, but being shortlisted was great anyway and it is publicity for my current work.

I received the following email:

“Thank you for applying for Magnum Showcase in association with IdeasTap: Family Portrait. We really appreciate the time you put into your application.

The judges have now selected the winners and they've been published on the brief page. We wanted to let you know that the judges were particularly impressed with your work and felt it displayed real talent - so congratulations on making the shortlist.”

Applying for awards and submitting work to be featured is all part of the process when preparing to exhibit your work using various outlets. 

The work I submitted was some images of my current study from The Boys Who Could Fly series. The link to my IdeasTap portfolio is here: http://www.ideastap.com/People/sarahpacker 

My work on Stampsy

I recieved the following email a week or so after being featured on Girls On Film:

To Me

Today at 2:13 PM

Hi Sarah,

My name is Anton and I am the editor-in-chief of stampsy.com -- a growing  
community of photographers that brings together the very best in  
contemporary visual arts.

I admire your work, having spotted some photographs in Girls on Film mag  
earlier on. It fits perfectly with our vision and values. I would love to  
see you being a contributor in our community.

Please let me know what you think.

Best wishes,
Anton

I looked at the site Stampsy and the work is very in keeping with my style on there and you can only have content on there if you are invited, so I am very flattered to have my work appreciated and then requested for the site. This is the link to my work http://stampsy.com/user/12180/latest/6439 good to see that it has 55 likes already and is on the home page of the site where all the posts that are trending are displayed. 

Girls On Film Photography Zine

I recently submitted some of my images to an online photography zine called Girls on Film and they emailed me today (15^th Feb) to ask me to send them a paragraph about the work and a few more images so that they can do a feature on my work. I just sent that off so will be seeing that up soon I imagine. I only sent them some portraits so it is a nice taster size of my work in the lead up to the exhibition and book, I like the idea of gradually feeding out your work to sites so that when you then have the show some people are already familiar with your work. It also makes for good publicity if nothing else!

The zine has featured on DazedDigital, Urban Outfitters, Vogue Girl, Elle Girl, Nasty Gal, It’s Nice That, Wow Magazine, The Thousands, Lost at E Minor, No Thoughts, Boys in Trouble, Farm Rio, First Look, Nostalgic, The International Picture House, Article Magazine and more. So I am hoping to get a good audience for my work and maybe the work will be printed in their zines as well. http://www.girlsonfilmzine.co.uk/jack-and-mark-by-sarah-packer/

This is a screen shot of the feature, and also a screen shot of the website homepage where my work is ‘advertised’. The feature has 8 photographs which is a good amount to start showing online, and with the feature being advertised on GirlsOnFilm twitter and their facebook I should garner a large audience for my work. 

Brief Exhibition Reviews: London

EXHIBITION REVIEWS (brief summary)

Somerset House: Behind The Mask - this exhibition consisted of a collection of BAFTA nominated and winning actors and actresses. Photographs were all the same size and framed the same, they were all taken by Andy Gotts and were variants of colour and black and white as some were from his archive of photographs. There were various quotes from certain films on the walls over the mantelpiece in each room. There were about 10 rooms with 5 or more images in each, this broke up the mass of photographs on display and allowed for the viewer to contemplate each image rather than have their view bombarded by over one hundred photographs at once. I was a fan of the more relaxed, playful photographs that reflected the title: Behind The Mask, however there were many of them that were very posed and airbrushed, very commercial and I could imagine them in a glossy magazine. I didn't linger on these ones very often as I’d seen celebrities photographed like this before. Overall, a very flowing layout with the small rooms lending an intimacy to the work.

The National Portrait Gallery: The Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize - I felt that the small space it was displayed in made some of the photographs trapped in corners that restricted the audience’s view of it. I felt that much of the time there wasn't much space to step back and look at the image as a whole. It was also a very clunky layout with images that didn't flow together being put next to each other and the winners were placed out of a linear order of winners which made it a little confusing. The contrasting image sizes in such a small space was also a little disorientating and seemed to place importance on some imagery compared to others. There were also photographs displayed close to the floor which seemed unusual and were difficult to look at properly.  Overall, a good selection of photographs I was just disappointed by the layout of such a prestigious prize. Was also good to see that the ‘Taylor Wessing style’ of dead pan portraits and muted colours has been less prominent in this year’s show. 

The Photographers Gallery: Taking Shots - William S Burroughs, David Lynch and Andy Warhol

“catching the intersection points between your inner reality and what you are seeing”

“arranged to be provocative rather than descriptive”

-William S Burroughs

Burroughs collaged photographs, text and found imagery which he then photographed. You would never see it in its final physical form, only the documentation of it.

The strong use of text in Burroughs work gave me the idea of incorporating text into my own work, the dialogue of my brothers and diary-like extracts. I think this would strengthen the depth of the work and add that realism that can sometimes disappear when put on a gallery wall.

Various series of his were displayed including ‘What was, What Isn’t’, described as being ‘concerned with the relation between experience, absence and presence, and how the camera could evoke something that no longer exists, but also how photographs work to influence and construct memories and desire.’

There was also his ‘Flower Series’ these photographs suggest how Burroughs was experimenting with arrangement of objects to evoke intimate aspects of his personal and family experience. I’d like to do something similar with objects that my brothers own - perhaps using medium format. Anna Dannemann from The Photographers Gallery also suggested this in my portfolio review.  

V&A: Photographic Fictions, Making It Up

A smaller show than I expected with one photograph from each artist on display. The curation was fantastic, the deep blue walls allowed for the images to really stand out alongside the different framing and mounting for the work. The various sizing of the works allowed for visual interest to be maintained which worked in the small space they were contained in. Gregory Crewdson’s image was particularly eye catching, as always with his works they are very strong in narrative and I am very aware that each element within the image contributes to the mood and suggestiveness of the scene. The image below was the one in the exhibition, it was beautifully framed and the large print size (roughly 2 metres wide) allowed for the small details to be visible and for me it felt like the woman in the garage was perhaps covering up a murder. Strange how much you can read into an image that has no story in text with it.

Gregory Crewdson, Untitled (Temple Street), 'Beneath the Roses', 2006 I was also looking forward to seeing Duane Michals’ work, as a long time admirer of his photographs I was slightly disappointed to only see one small series of his. It was 'Chance Meeting', 1972 where two men pass in an alleyway without incident, but the encounter seems loaded with significance. The photographs are framed consistently, and the figures move in and out of the shot, as in a film. It’s one of his less visually interesting works but is one of his most well known, I would have liked to have seen his sequence ‘Christ in New York’, but seeing his work up close was still a great experience. Oliver Boberg was interesting, he photographs real life areas and then models them in his studio and photographs the model. (image below)

My website/tumblr

CHECK OUT MY TUMBLR PAGE:
sarahhpacker.tumblr.com

The site shows both my own photographic work and my inspirations too :)