Braga!

This Portuguese photography festival is called Encontros da Imagem and has been around for about 25 years. It is curated yearly around a theme and consists of exhibitions dotted around the beautifully historic city of Braga.

I had a portfolio review in Paris about 2 years ago and met Bill Kowenhoven from Hotshoe International who, after seeing my series If you get married again, will you still love me? introduced me to Rui Prata, a curator and museum director.  I thought nothing of it but sent Rui my work as requested and heard nothing, apart from a thank you, for about a year and a half.  Then I received an email asking if I would like to be included in the festival and that they would sort everything out, pay me to be involved, print my work, present it and could I come to Portugal for a weekend and enjoy food, parties, openings and meet all the other photographers?  Let me think about it, I said.
My work was included in She loves me, She loves me not with the overarching theme of the year being Love will tear us apart.  It was displayed in a converted monastery situated at the top of a mountain / hill with splendid views over the city.
It was amazing.  Here is why:
As well as being treated like a celebrity with all the free flowing wine, freshly caught seafood and lavish lunches it was amazing to be around people who are all in the same boat, as it were.  Often being a photographer is a lonely existence, you are just working on your personal projects until you get something to show for it, then you have to go through the arduous job of getting it out into the world.  Meeting kindred spirits of established and emerging names, sharing notes and inspiration was like a source of life for me.  It was the cherry on the cake that a couple of those people were photographers I had admired from afar; Elina Brotherus and Anna Fox.  Hearing firsthand about some of their obstacles and solutions gave me a new depth of determination and drive.
Discovering new talent and being able to hang out with them restored my passion and love of photography.  Sometimes I feel like if I see another photograph it will be too soon.  (Sorry, nothing personal, it’s a direct cause and effect of living in our techno-digital age.) But here I was inspired and in awe of what some of these people were doing with a medium which had become so familiar.  Some were as young as 19 and their commitment, ideas and energy were contagious.  It reminded me about what I love about photography and also what I want to represent to the next generation of photographers.  There is so much potential to be released and we are the ones to do it.
It gave me hope in the future of photography and reignited my desire to play a part in that future narrative.
Lastly, and by no means leastly, the fact that someone else deemed my work decent enough to go on a wall in the same room as Anna Fox made my year.
The festival runs for the rest of the month.  If you are interested next year there are Portfolio Reviews which happen in the first week, they attract big names and might be worth considering.
I’m going to be interviewing some of the artists in the coming weeks on Photoparley.