Please resist the temptation to stage this type of exhibition. If you show your greatest hits, or “everything I have ever photographed” in one exhibition or show, what are you going to do next? I saw an exhibit the other day and it was spectacular in documenting the breadth of the photographer’s oeuvre (I just love using that word – it makes me sound so artistic). As I left the exhibit, I thought, “What does he have left to show us? Where does he go from here?” When you assemble a greatest hits exhibition, it usually signals the end of an era. Is it the end of photography, the end of that style of photography or are you celebrating a major breaking point in the creative process? Some thought needs to be given to what I would call a “terminal exhibition” because retrospectives exhibitions are usually reserved for deceased artists. That’s why I think very carefully about what I submit for juried shows. You need to leave the door open a bit so you may be invited back.
On my web site I created my “Fifty Project” as a statement about photography in my life as I achieved my fiftieth birthday. That type of project had a definite “time stamp” to it and was a survey to that point. I did call it a mid-career retrospective. As I look back on some of those photographs I can see that my photography has changed from where I was then. That’s a good thing.
I’ve thought about the next “career project” and thought that it might be interesting to have a Fifty Years of Photography Project (Hey, if Brett Weston can do that, why not me?). When that rolls around, it would be interesting to see how many photographs from the Fifty Project survive to make the Fifty Years in Photography Project.
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