>>PREVIEW
PHOTO SWAP
Runs until March 18
Paul Kuhn Gallery
Have you ever dreamed of having your photography on the walls of a commercial art gallery? Well, now Paul Kuhn Gallery in conjunction with Exposure (the Calgary-Banff photography festival) is giving you that chance by hosting Photo Swap.
Conceived by British curator Timothy Prus, Photo Swap is the ultimate democratization of art. More than 1,000 photographs will be posted on the walls of the gallery in a revolving door of imagery. Those who participate will bring in one to three of their own photos and then exchange them for images already on the walls of the gallery.
"Photography looks to me from its inception like a communal project," writes Prus in a synopsis of the idea. "I don’t have a problem with people making careers with the medium or with photographs costing hundreds of thousands of dollars each, but personally I feel more comfortable in the free exchange arena. I am mesmerized by the quality of different printing techniques. A photo can have a life force, whether it be a salt print, a cyanotype or a page in a newspaper. My emotional relationship with print qualities is both very personal and liberal. Too much ink has been spilt in the analysis of what constitutes fine printing. The motivation behind making a photo is often more intriguing than its physical nature."
So dig out your Polaroids, Cibachrome prints or the black-and-white work you created during your high school photography course. The rules are simple:
· You can exchange three photographs.
· The photographs must be ones that you have taken.
· No Photoshop work or outright image manipulation.
· No pornography.
· Your photographs can be any size and printed on any medium.
· These are free swaps.
· To swap, find a Photo Swap monitor and they will swap the pictures for you.
At the end of the exhibition, the photography will be boxed up and sent to another gallery. Future locations for Photo Swap include Prague, China, Paris and Mexico City.
"Photo Swap attempts a disruption of hierarchies, creating new value systems and potentialities through the continual realignment of these interchanging images," says Prus. "Photo Swap is also a great opportunity for people both within and outside the discursive space of mainstream photography to get along and party. My desire for this project hinges on exploring a wide variety of possibilities: bringing people together, losing their inhibitions and showing their creativity. For me, the role of the artist-photographer is a topic of permanent reassessment; I am a husband, father, entrepreneur, provider and a humour trigger. Above all, I want to share my heirlooms with people who I know will care." |
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