PHOTOGRAPHERS. In her new book, Crusade For Your Art: Best Practices For Fine Art Photographers, Jennifer Schwartz encourages photographers to thoughtfully and purposefully develop plans that can help them get where they want to go in the world of fine-art photography.
“The art world has been turned on its head, and no one knows what to do about it,” observes Schwartz. Instead of pining for the good old days or bemoaning the fact that everyone with a DSLR (or iPhone) can call themselves photographers, Schwartz encourages photographers to take steps to build their own careers: “Photographers with talent, creativity, and ambition can start their own fires.”
Jennifer Schwartz is the creator/director of Crusade for Art, a non-profit organization focused on cultivating demand for art, specifically fine art photography. For five years, she owned the Jennifer Schwartz Gallery in Atlanta where she worked to educate a new crop of collectors while promoting the careers of talented, emerging contemporary photographers.
She has served as a portfolio reviewer at photography events such as PhotoLucida in Portland, Filter Photo Festival in Chicago, Medium in San Diego, and Atlanta Celebrates Photography. In the spring of 2013, she traveled to 10 cities throughout the U.S. in a 1977 Volkswagen bus on a “Crusade for Collecting Tour.” During this “revivalist” tour, she sought to build “grassroots” art appreciation by engaging people who live outside the urban centers of traditional art world.
In the book, Jennifer explains how to tighten your body of work, develop a brand, identify goals and a plan, and strategically launch a project. The book features insights from more than 25 top industry curators, gallerists, editors, and photographers, including:
- Karen Irvine, curator at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago
- Kat Kiernan, owner of The Kiernan Gallery and Editor of “Don’t Take Pictures” magazine
- Melanie McWhorter, book division manager at photo-eye in Santa Fe
- Amy Miller, executive director of Atlanta Celebrates Photography
- Conor Risch, senior editor at PDN (Photo District News)
- Ariel Shanberg, executive director of The Center for Photography at Woodstock
- Lauren Steel, managing editor for reportage, Getty Images
The book is available in printed form (140 pages, softcover) or as an e-book. It can purchased from the Crusade for Art website, Amazon, or Apple’s iBooks Store. All profits from book sales will go to the Crusade for Art organization.
Apply for a $10,000 Crusade Engagement Grant by April 1, 2014
To motivate photographers to think about their work, their target audiences, and how to best engage them, the Crusade for Art organization is offering a $10,000 Crusade Engagement Grant to the photographer who proposes the most creative and original ideas to create and foster demand for fine-art photography.
The organization seeks well-developed projects that will
- create an aesthetic experience (one that actively involves the viewer’s senses, emotion, and intellect)
- provide opportunities for interacting with the photographer and/or the images
- lower the perceived barriers to participation with art
- clearly identify the target audiences (e.g. not “the general public”)
Crusade for Art isn’t looking for proposals that seek funds to create a body of work, mount an exhibition, produce a book, or participate in a workshop.
According to the entry guidelines, Crusade for Art is looking for “projects that focus on creating demand for photography and provide a concrete plan to create one-to-one connections between the photographer, viewer, and the audience.”
The grant program organizers believe that there is an elaborate and well-funded support system available on the ‘supply’ side the art industry, but not enough effort or support on the ‘demand’ side: “We are looking to break new ground here” and believe that artists themselves are best positioned to develop innovative ways to connect audiences to their work.”
Members of the selection committee include: Whitney Johnson, director of photography at The New Yorker; Karen Irvine, curator and associate director at the Museum of Contemporary Photography; and Rupert Jenkins, executive director of the Colorado Photographic Arts Center.
Initial applications are due April 1. Finalists will be announced May 15.
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