The Photographers’ Gallery is an establishment that was set up in 1971, and is a public gallery that displays various photographic works from already established photographers to less well known, and up and coming photographers. The Photographers’ Gallery funding is split into three sections; 1/3 of funding comes from the arts council, another 1/3 comes through tax money, and then the last 1/3 comes through individual gallery owners, or investors in art.
Background information:
Karen McQuaid was brought up in the suburbs of Dublin, and went to a school run by nuns. During her talk, McQuaid pin pointed that her fascination with photography all started at tower records (a record shop) where she was mainly drawn to the magazines because of the images on the covers. After this, Karen McQuaid decided to move to London, to try and join a magazine company. Firstly, McQuaid was employed by Surface magazine. Ultimately, within this time Karen McQuaid organised an exhibition, and was entrusted with the responsibility that comes with this. Next, Karen decided to transfer to Tank magazine, where she completed an internship , then was subsequently employed as a freelance photographer for Tank magazine. Working as a freelance photographer for Tank magazine paved the way for Karen to start photographing fashion for them. I found that Karen McQuaid was so completely honest with everything linking to her early career, and how she left things with Tank magazine. Ultimately, Karen McQuaid said that she left this job as she felt that the industry just seemed very unappealing suddenly; she wanted to go down a different route. McQuaid also added to this, that she didn’t want to leave photography fully though; just the world of fashion and magazines. Her fascination with photographs and photography in general still played a huge part in what she wanted to do as a career.
In the next part of the talk, Karen McQuaid started to go through some of her failures and obstacles in her career. This is a key aspect of the talk that I completely connected with. Ultimately, it inspired me to be more experimental with my work, and to not be too scared to be fairly radical with my work; of course within reason. Additionally, it made me really think about how important failures are, and the fact that we learn from them. Karen herself admitted to these failures, but it makes you realise that she worked her way up from completing an internship and now she is the Senior Curator at The Photographers’ Gallery; she is trusted with artist’s works and her opinions really mean something. Therefore, it could be said that failures are crucial to the development process; how we grow as artists and people working within the art industry.
Failures:
- Found her way to The Photographers’ Gallery, and ended up starting an internship. After this, McQuaid got work at The Photographers’ Gallery organising talks and events after a space for this role opened up. Whilst doing this, she was also still completing an MA in photographic studies. Her her first exhibition that she organised was called ‘Found, Shared’ exhibition. Ultimately, Karen McQuaid recollects how her first failure was that she presumed a sort of familiarity with the guy who was supposed to be leading the talk at the exhibition. This presumed familiarity was just on the basis that both Karen and him both originate from Dublin. Initially, this guy said that he was going to bring a “light weight wired prop”, but in fact he didn’t. When the guy who was going to give the talk mentioned the artist who had made this work, Karen didn’t mention that she didn’t know the artist or his work, as she admits she felt embarrassed by this fact. Eventually, the “light weight” prop was revealed to be a heavy and large sculpture of some sorts. This proved very difficult to manoeuvre around The Photographers’ Gallery, and was considered a health and safety issue as well, due to the pointy, sharp corners of the structure.
- Next, Karen McQuaid found herself becoming the programme organiser at The Photographers’ Gallery. The first show that she was solely responsible was that of Jim Goldberg. Within the time of Karen organising this exhibition , Jim Goldberg was travelling quite a lot for long amounts of time (travelling for photographs). At this point, Karen McQuaid admitted to feeling slightly out of her comfort zone, and she started panicking thinking that she wasn’t good enough to organise this exhibition. McQuaid admitted that her failure in this was panicking in the first place. As she has developed in the photographic industry, she now realises that others would not trust in her unless they truly believed that she could do it; that you could provide for the industry.
McQuaid also mentioned after this that through making mistakes, she learnt that budgeting isn’t always best. Obviously it’s important for sustainability, but you must always question expenses. What do you sacrifice by saving money? Another lesson that Karen McQuaid said she learnt from failing was that you have to be decent and pleasant with those who help you. Working well is a necessity when working so closely together; especially in her job where she is working with lots of artists.
Some more words of wisdom from Karen McQuaid mace from the fact that you should always believe in your gut feeling. Ultimately, if you desperately want something to happen, don’t shy away from this. Although, you still must be completely considerate of other peoples feelings, and sometimes you may have to compromise. For instance, Karen McQuaid invited artists Jason Evans and Ivan Vartanian to work together, and to present ideas about Japanese photo books; what they really think of them. McQuaid stated that she asked them to choose 200 of their favourite books to be exhibited at The Photographers’ Gallery on shelves for people to read and look at. This idea proved to be a fairly difficult one to convince other teams in The Photographers’ Gallery to get on board with. Although, Karen stuck to her guns and felt that this was a strong idea; an idea that allowed people to just sit an look at these books in their own time.
Overall, I found Karen McQuaid’s talk very engaging as it was very different from all of the other talks we have had. The other talks that I have listened too all revolve around photographers who are constantly creating work themselves; this talk was given by a curator who works with photographers and still has a great knowledge of the photographic industry. I found it also very insightful that Karen McQuaid let us in on some of her failures in her career and how she has grown from them, and ultimately learnt from them. It makes me really realise that we are all human, so at the end of the day will make mistake. Therefore, i guess this relieves some pressure from wanting everything to be perfect all of the time. I think this is the way in which artists develop their work over long amounts of time; they make mistakes and then keep retrying, or building on their initial idea.
Bethany White Photography 