I joined the meeting organised by the student association with Susan Bright, a well-known curator and book creator of what she terms ‘lens-based art’.

She showed us two photo books she had created and described the associated exhibitions. Her first exhibition, Home Truths in which the subject was motherhood and identity was staged at the Photographers Gallery in London in 2013. She described how the exhibition was developed, in what she called a spider’s web. Initially, it was based around one photograph by Janise Antoni called Inhabit, which was printed large so that it filled the dividing wall, and then the other photographs were arranged around it.

Fig 1: Installation of Home Truths (Elliot, 2013)

One interesting aspect of the exhibition was the shelf, shown on the left in the picture. This was included as Susan Bright wanted it to reflect the way in which pictures were framed in the home, and displayed on shelves. These would be visible and touchable by the visiting public.

Given that I intend to stage an exhibition of my work in the coming summer I was interested in the finances of the exhibition, and Susan replied that the exhibition had taken two years to create and had cost 60,000. I also asked where the finance had come from, given that at that time, the Photographers Gallery was free to enter, and she said that the cost was fully covered by the gallery, and came from sponsors and sales within the gallery.

She then spoke about a later exhibition called Feast for the Eyes, also displayed in the Photographer’s Gallery in 2019. This was based on a book that she had previously created and covered the photography of food over the century that photography had existed.

Fig 2: Installation of Feast for the Eyes (Elliot, 2019)

She described how this had been a travelling exhibition, and had been displayed in galleries all over the world. Due to COVID-19, the exhibition in Canada had to be curated via Zoom as it was impossible to be there for the event, and as the pandemic had increased the intended display in New York never occurred.

Once again I was interested in the financing of this exhibition and Susan stated that the exhibition had cost each gallery 20.000 to hire. I asked how much of this went to the actual photographers and she answered that none of it made its way back to the original creators of the images. This surprised me as the pictures being exhibited were the intellectual property of the original photographers. No wonder that it is difficult to make a living out of photography.

The whole meeting was very interesting and I think that I learnt a lot. I’m not sure how much I can make use of in my own exhibition but it has given me a lot to think about.

List of Illustrations

Fig 1: Elliot, K. (2013) Installation of Home Truths. At:
https://archive.thephotographersgallery.org.uk/cdn/thephotographersgallery/previews/49/94a51a1139966eb1b7d6ba29dac37f80/2/276f968c468077bd64264d2197818232/14627.jpg

Fig 2: Elliot, K. (2019) Installation of Feast for the Eyes. At:
https://archive.thephotographersgallery.org.uk/cdn/thephotographersgallery/previews/70/5ba4a22d90b1d874d79930e08fab2066/2/5902ec6268ce4ef669c58a345d7e63f3/20840.jpg