An excellent call to arms. One caveat: I think a lot of people here do understand photoblogging’s role in the evolution of photography right now. The Chrystie Street Gallery exhibit itself is evidence of that.

The point about rethinking the gallery experience is interesting. Perhaps a future show could try to integrate an online element into the gallery experience. For instance, perhaps mount one flatscreen on the gallery wall that displays, say, a stream of new images from the show's participants, updated in real time--sort of like a Flickr stream of fresh images from the photogs in the show.

Another idea: visual commenting. It might work like this: Post the show's photos online in one place, but but instead of letting people comment on them with words, commenters are invited to post a photo of their own as a "visual comment." Then figure out a way to incorporate the resulting visual comments back into the gallery experience. Things like this could end up feeling like a gimmick ... but might also be interesting to see where the experiment leads. --JP

I would sort of laugh at a gallery show that was a room full of computers, but that's just me.

However, I'd love to see people given pens and post-it notes at gallery shows where visitors could leave a "comment" on a piece of art (photos in our case). Leave a name or don't. Respond to another comment or the picture itself.

Maybe you keep the post-it notes by the art itself. Not sure. It's just an idea, but one that I think could be really cool.

You certainly wouldn't want a room full of computers. In fact, you wouldn't want a single computer in the room. The challenge to any of this--whether it's post-it notes, or something else--would be doing it gracefully.

It looks like Matt misunderstood something here, so I'd like to clarify in case anyone else thinks what he thought:

It didn't sound as if Shooter was arguing for a room full of computers, and I'm not either. I'm talking about a normal gallery exhibit -- framed prints hanging on walls. Nothing ridiculous. After all, I want my own work to be taken seriously.

But one thing Shooter does argue in the original post is that photoblogging is an "emerging style of art." If you accept that argument, then it's interesting to ask if there are ways that art form might be reflected in a gallery show of the work. It could be as simple as accompanying each print with viewer comments (a point Shooter and Matt both make). There may be other possibilities, too. I hope that helps. -- JP

I didn't misunderstand quite as much as extend it to something I thought of myself. In other words, I was laughing at my own idea : )

I think the thing that makes photoblogging unique is that ideas and responses to a picture can be exchanged in real time. Taking the photos along with the comments that were originally left and putting on a white wall shows the conversation that happened, but doesn't allow it to continue. I think it's a step in the right direction, but perhaps it doesn't go far enough.

The main point is that when photobloggers take their images, put them in frames, and then hang them in a gallery as part of a group show, just like every other photography group exhibit, the work stops being about photoblogging.

To continue the analogy, its like if you took the Huffington Post, took all the contributors and put them on salary and with deadlines, added editors and a printer, and made it into a daily newspaper. It might be a fun daily newspaper, but it could not compete with the New York Times for content or readership.

If photobloggers want their work respected because they as individuals are great photographers, than that is one thing, and when they present their work in a gallery photoblogging is secondary to them being a photographer in the “traditional sense”.

However, if photobloggers want to have a group show of “photobloggers” work, than they need to bring into the gallery space what makes photoblogging a STYLE of photography: the discourse, the online dynamic, the mixture of text and images, the ability of anyone in the world to comment on images or to share images.

It would be an amazing and very important exhibit if photobloggers bring their STYLE into a gallery. And a couple of computers as part of an exhibition could make a spectacular show.

Joel, I agree that the basic elements of a photoblog should be incorporated in an exhibit so that it becomes apparent what message the exhibit is trying to convey. In this case, the exhibit was a starting point for many of the "lesser-known" photobloggers. By displaying their work, accompanied by the photobloggers bio, we are able to increase traffic on their respective sites and, if their work entices people to return, increase the number of return visitors.

The commenting and critiquing will come as a result of those visitors as long as the photoblog provides a place for people to leave comments.

I’m a big fan of incorporating the online or technical elements of a photoblog in an exhibit and this is something we could think about the next time around. For now, we are simply providing an additional platform for Photobloggers to display their work. Many of the great Photobloggers in Toronto (Sam, Jay, Rannie, etc.) are involved in numerous exhibits. I’d be curious to see what they think about this.

It is understandable that we would want to be differentiated.

However, our "product" is still a photograph and as long as that is the case, the quality and content of the photographs we make is all that really matters to the audience.

I think, our differentiation is not in that we produce something different, but in how we come to producing what we do. We are a community of people of multiple and highly differentiated backgrounds in culture, language, lifestyle, age, education and professional experience. And we all influence each other by commenting, by looking at each others ideas and by encouraging each other in entirely non-commercial ways. All of this is 100% new.

Personally, I have already benefited from this phenomenon a great deal, but in the end I do not want a slide show exhibit, I still want a paper print, framed and on the wall.

I think we do not have to change anything. We just do exactly that which was done at the Crystie street exhibit: bring people from different backgrounds to the same place and have our diversity be our differentiation.

Yefim Natis
ynatis@gmail.com

Honestly, the act of blogging is a fad that will run out of steam real soon.

Yefim makes a good point: It's the strength of the images that get people interested. Introducing an element of dialogue might just be a cherry on top. --JP

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