Portrait Salon

We love this pic of Jim from Miniclick framed in the Portrait...

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 12:28:08 -0500

We love this pic of Jim from Miniclick framed in the Portrait Salon logo… pic taken by Manel Ortega, who also did the pics for the timelapse below.

Miniclick have got some newspapers left and will be selling them at their event tonight. If you’re in Brighton, head on down to the Old Market to hear Jim Mortram in conversation with Wayne Ford. More details here.

A timelapse movie of images taken by Manel Ortega at the...

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 08:49:57 -0500

A timelapse movie of images taken by Manel Ortega at the Brighton leg of Portrait Salon ‘12… where the screen collapsed and the slideshow was projected onto the wall of the opposite building! Which looked great.

Thanks to Jim and his sidekicks for all their hard work…

Photos of the London event by Joe Plommer

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 10:21:33 -0500

Photos of the London event by Joe Plommer

Tonight's the night!

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 08:10:19 -0500

Here we are… after a year of fundraising, marketing, gathering rejected images and putting this edition of the newspaper together, Portrait Salon 2012 will finally go public this evening, in four venues around the UK…

Over the past 24 hours there has been quite a buzz on Twitter and other social media, and we’ve been featured on the wonderful Feature Shoot, run by Alison Zavos. You can read the article here.

And then today, the icing on the cake… a lovely article written by Phil Coomes on the BBC website, which you can read here

So we’re all set! All we need now is you… Projections kick off at 7pm, and there will be an attempt at a live link-up between the venues at around 8.30pm. With no technical hitches, honest!

For details of a projection near you, see previous post on this blog. And, if you’re on Twitter, spread the word! Let’s try and get #portraitsalon trending.

We are the 99%

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 10:38:50 -0500

One week to go… and everything’s coming together. The newspapers have arrived, flyers have been distributed, the live link up between the venues has been checked, and the slideshow is almost done. We’ve even had some press!

We were very pleased to be featured in the Independent on Sunday last weekend; 3 double page spreads featuring a great article and ten images from our chosen photographers, complete with captions. If you missed the hard copy, you can read the article here. The headline in the newspaper was “We are the 99%” which we thought very apt… so many thanks to the team at the Independent for your support.

We also have a short article in the current issue of fLIP, the magazine for the London Independent Photography. Sadly not available online, but you can buy a copy from all good photographic book shops. (Joni Karanka, Director of Third Floor Gallery in Cardiff, which will also be showing Portrait Salon next week, has an article in there too..)

So we are looking forward to seeing you all next week! Spread the word.

A date for your diaries

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 11:39:39 -0400

Many thanks (again!) to all who submitted to Portrait Salon this year. We had an amazing 1,105 images submitted to us, from around 400 photographers, which is about twice as many as last year. We really appreciate your support. The selections have now been made and, if you did submit to us, you should have been notified of the decision today.

To celebrate our second year the event is also getting bigger. It will still be in the form of a projection, with the publication of a newspaper, but this time the slideshow will be screened in four venues across the UK on the same night! The date is 29 November, and hopefully you’ll be able to get to one of these places:

LONDON: Roxy Bar and Screen, 128 – 132 Borough High St, London, SE1 1LB

LEEDS: White Cloth Gallery, 24 - 26 Aire Street, Leeds, LS1 4HT

CARDIFF: Third Floor Gallery. 102 Bute St, Cardiff, CF10 5AD

BRIGHTON: Upstairs at Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar, 9-12 Middle Street, Brighton, BN1 1AL

The Brighton event is kindly hosted by the mighty Miniclick peeps and we are very grateful to the Directors of White Cloth and Third Floor for hosting an event on our behalf.

Get the date in your diaries! It’s gonna be quite a night…

Thank you

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 10:11:20 -0400

Firstly, apologies for the massive lapse in blog posts. One of us disappeared for a month to South East Asia… and is only now getting back into the swing of things.

Thank you so much to all those who submitted work to Portrait Salon 2012. We don’t have exact figures of how many images were submitted, but we received work from around 380 photographers, which is a huge increase on last year. We really appreciate your support for our project.

The selectors will be making their selections over the next couple of weeks, and all photographers will be notified of their success in the week beginning 8 October. Good luck everyone!

It’s official! Portrait Salon ‘12 is funded by Arts...

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 03:57:18 -0400

It’s official! Portrait Salon ‘12 is funded by Arts Council England…

portrait salon talks

Thu, 21 Jun 2012 10:49:16 -0400

July is going to be a busy month for us, as we have been invited to give two talks, either end of the country…

First up is the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, on Saturday 21 July. The event forms part of the gallery’s Alternative Camera Club; we will talk about how the Salon started, our motivations, inspirations, and plans for the coming years, and we will show the selection from last year. The gallery has a big exhibition of West African Art on display, and the most exciting (and humbling!) thing about our talk is that it follows a talk by the great James Barnor. Worth a trip on two accounts!

Then, on Monday 23 July we will be down in Brighton for one of the Miniclick talks. For this event, we have invited five photographers featured in 2011 to come and talk about their work. Julia Johnson, Jean-Luc Brouard, Adrian Nettleship, Nicola Tree and Ben Gold will each give a little introduction to their practice, and there will also be a chance to hear about how Portrait Salon came about and to see the projection from last year. You can read more about the photographers on the Miniclick blog.

Selectors

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 07:03:00 -0400

The National Portrait Gallery has recently announced its judges for this year’s Taylor Wessing Award, so we thought we’d announce ours.

The point of Portrait Salon is not to show all the rejects, but to show the good images which don’t get a look in at the National Portrait Gallery. Last year, we selected the images with the help of Miranda Gavin, from Hotshoe magazine, but this year we have decided to take a step back from the selection process, and have invited members of the industry to do it for us. We are very pleased to announce our three selectors for Portrait Salon ‘12 are Karen Newman, curator at Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool, Hat, from photographic agency Lucid Rep, and photographer Dan Burn Forti.

We are excited to have them on board, and they seem to be excited to be working with us… Bring on Portrait Salon ‘12!

plotting...

Thu, 10 May 2012 06:56:00 -0400

We’ve been a bit quiet on the blog recently, but we have been busy behind the scenes planning for Portrait Salon ‘12. Here’s a little update as to where we’re at.

After the success of the inaugural Portrait Salon last year, we are planning the same again - only bigger and better! This time, we will have an all singing all dancing website, designed and built by Birch Studios, which will enable us to have online submissions, as well as have an online resource of last year’s projection, and the projections to come.

Last year we self funded the project, as we felt strongly that the newspaper was key in creating a legacy for Portrait Salon. This year, we are seeking funds to help us build the website and for the publication of the second edition of the paper. Sadly, the Arts Council rejected our submission to Grants to the Arts, so now we are seeking sponsorship from organisations associated to the photography industry.

Our strategy is to ask many organisations, each representing different sectors of the industry, for the small sum of £250. In return, we will feature logos on the website and the newspaper, with a click through to their website. So far, we are very pleased to announce that the following organisations have come on board:
Creative Advice Network
Metro Imaging
Hero
Lucid Rep
Heather March Casting
Tony Swinney

But we still need more cash, and we are still seeking sponsors… so if you’d like your organisation to join this prestigious list, please do get in touch! We even have a new email address: info@portraitsalon.co.uk

Many thanks, and here’s to an exciting Portrait Salon 2012!

Many thanks to PhotoBookShow for making this short film of our...

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 04:43:17 -0500

Many thanks to PhotoBookShow for making this short film of our newspaper. They are at Ffotogallery in Cardiff today, and will be in London next week - another opportunity to get your copy!

http://www.photobookshow.co.uk/

News

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:11:00 -0500

2012 has kicked off nicely for Portrait Salon. Last Thursday we were invited to Open Eye in Liverpool to give a talk about the project and to show the projection. Open Eye Gallery has recently moved to a lovely new build near the Albert Docks in Liverpool, and we were excited to see the Richard Simpkin exhibition and see the space.

This was the first time we talked about the project in public, and it was a good exercise for us, with the audience raising some interesting questions which created a rather lively debate. All in all a successful evening, and we are very grateful to Karen and her team for inviting us up and looking after us so well. We hope we will visit again with Portrait Salon 12.

The next day saw a trip over to Manchester, where we met with Ed Watts at Whitworth Art Gallery. He was very supportive of our project and keen to support us for our next edition. In the meantime, the Gallery Shop have agreed to stock the paper, so now we have two stockists in the North West, as we have some at Open Eye too.

Finally, we are dead excited to have been selected for the Photobook Arts Fayre in Cardiff on the 25 February, which is organised by Photobook Show. They are also organising a photobook show in London on the first weekend in March, and would like to take our paper to that, too, so smiles all round! More details on them can be found here: http://www.photobookshow.co.uk/

For Sale on the web

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 04:09:04 -0500

Finally you can buy our newspaper anywhere you like! Portrait Salon ‘11 is available on the Internet, at Black Box Press:

http://www.blackboxpress.co.uk/shop.php

Enjoy!

Going Up North...

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 09:15:18 -0500

We are very excited to have been invited to present the Portrait Salon slideshow at Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool. The event is on 26 January, and we will also be giving a talk. More info here:

http://www.openeye.org.uk/events/portrait-salon-event/

for sale

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 03:34:00 -0500

Many people have been asking where they can buy a copy of Portrait Salon 11. Here is the definitive list:

Silverprint: 12 Valentine Place, London, SE1 8QH

Metro Imaging: 32 Great Sutton Street London EC1V 0NB

Hotshoe Gallery: 29-31 Saffron Hill City of London EC1N 8SW

Underground Gallery: Exit 9, Charing Cross Underground, The Strand, London WC2N 4HZG

For those of you not in London, Portrait Salon will soon be available on various sites on the web. We are still ironing out details but as soon as they’re up and running we’ll let you know.

Meanwhile, Wayne Ford is giving away eight copies of the paper from his blog. For details on how to win a copy, see here: http://wayneford.posterous.com/new-blog-post-portrait-salon-newspaper-giveaw

thank you

Sat, 03 Dec 2011 08:46:00 -0500

Our event at Roxy Bar and Screen on Wednesday was an overwhelming success. Many thanks to Jess and other members of staff at the Roxy and thank you all so much for coming!

Pics on the slideshow below…

Video

Sat, 03 Dec 2011 08:31:50 -0500

hot off the press

Sat, 26 Nov 2011 06:59:32 -0500

Yesterday we spent an amazing day at the printers, watching our first Portrait Salon newspaper come off the press. It will be available to purchase on Wednesday at Roxy Bar and Screen, for a mere £2…. don’t miss it!

The printing of the first Portrait Salon 11 newspaper

Sat, 26 Nov 2011 06:56:45 -0500

The printing of the first Portrait Salon 11 newspaper