paul clifford photography: October 2011

On Saturday I participated in London Photomonth Photofair 2011 - a very long, interesting, productive and successful day!

It was a very different experience to a gallery show. There, you have a Private View to talk to a lot of people about your work in a short space of time, then the pictures are left to fend for themselves for the course of the exhibition. At Photofair, it was busy like a Private View, but with a completely different atmosphere. Instead of coming to see my pictures, people had come to see around a hundred photographers, most of whom were there to sell pictures rather than create a statement such as an exhibition. As was I.

I shared an open exhibition area and adjacent table with David Aston (find him at www.rmutt.co.uk), who had another point of view on the day - he was very much there to show new work and get some opinion and discussion on it. So we had a good mix of attention. Here's the stall as it looked, with Dave's pictures in the dark frames and mine in the light (poor picture, with so much else to organise, I neglected to bring a camera on the day!).

Whereas my recent exhibtions have focused on themes (Doors and Windows, Evening in Venice), with Photofair I wanted to show a good overview of my work so I selected some personal favourites from the last 2 or 3 years, most of which hadn't been exhibited before. This made for quite a contrasting range of style and content - just what I wanted!

So, with my mind on the market-style atmosphere of Photofair, I brought over one hundred prints to sell. Lots of them were sold and found new homes on Saturday, which I was very pleased about for a number of reasons, and not just the obvious!

Someone parting with money in exchange for one of my pieces is a great validation for the work for me. I've been taking and cataloguing these pictures for nearly twenty years, considering only myself, and the images I wanted to make. There was no commercial consideration, or attempt to emulate anyone else.

Only recently I've started publicly showing my art photography and getting feedback from strangers. So the fact that other people like them, not just friends and family, is a good boost to continue to make and show the work as I want to.

For most of those twenty years, my pictures have been sitting in books on a shelf in my home, seen only by me and a few others. This year lots of them have gone off into the world and reside elsewhere, to be looked at and enjoyed by other eyes. In fact, one of the framed pictures from Saturday is going as far as Switzerland!

I love this, it's probably what I find most satisfying about parting with a picture. I always try to ask buyers to send a picture of the work once it's in situ (to paul@paulclifford.com if you have one!) - I spend so much time with the images they feel like family to me, so I want to see them comfortable in their new home!

It's also interesting to see which pictures go. This was particularly so on Saturday when there were so many to choose from, and so many were sold. Quite a few people selected a choice of three images, and it's fascinating to me how they curated their own little exhibitions. By all means leave a comment if you bought picture/s on the day - from me or anyone else - why did you choose as you did, and how are you enjoying the picture/s?

I always like to give you something to look at in addition to my meanderings, so here are a few of the three picture customer-created selections that were made at Photofair -

Great stuff, pulling together some very interesting combinations. As I said, a really interesting day and a different experience.

I am, of course, still dedicated to showing work in a more considered and thoughtful atmosphere and I should have news very soon about another exhibition in the next few weeks in what looks to be a very nice venue - keep an eye on www.facebook.com/paulcliffordartist (and be sure to click Like!) for news.

To finish then, here are a few more pictures from Photofair...