Photofest happened the 15-27 of March in Houston, TX.
This year’s Photofest was focused on Contemporary Arab Photography, Video and Mixed Media Art. The whole art scene in Houston participate, you will see open galleries filled with work by photographers from all around the world.
I had the opportunity to attend a portfolio review as an observer along with Middle Grey Vice President Paulina Mendoza and members Martha Fierro, and Nico Nordström, also members of Middle Grey. Photographers from all over the world attend Photofest. Photographers pay to get their work seen by professionals and reviewed, in hopes of getting someone interested in their work and to be critiqued into a different direction. I had the opportunity to sit with Dragana Vujanovick curator for the Hasselbad Foundation in Gotenborg, Sweden. The portfolio review lasted from 8AM to 4PM and Dragana Vujanovick reviewed around fifteen different portfolios. Each of them very different, observing the entire day, gave me a great insight on how Portfolio Reviews actually go. Sitting on the side of the curator gave me a whole different perspective on what they are looking for, what they don’t like, about presentation and what is the correct way to present your work. Every artist was different; you could see only amateurs, professors, students and people that had been on the field showing their newest work. Some of it was very good, good, and some of it wasn’t that great. Being able to see what the curator is saying, and the feedback she is giving was probably one of the best lessons I’ve had in the last years. Being able to not only listen but to actually talk to her about her perspective about the work really made me excited to start working on bigger projects and took the fear away of one day attending a portfolio review to show my work.
