Neil Chowdhury

I’m back from the national SPE conference in Philly, tired but inspired. The conference (my third) was a great chance to reconnect with old friends and to make some new ones. I was really amazed how many people I knew there. It was like a 4 day house party with 1200 guests, but instead of dumb drinking games, we had engaging and informative speakers, discussion panels, and endless opportunities for networking. This might have been a drag, except for the fact that everyone there was some sort of creative photographer, artist, curator, educator, publisher, or some combination of the above. The hotel was abuzz with incredible creative energy the whole time, as new ideas were hatched and old ones transformed. Along with some incredible fellowship, I was happy to also receive a lot of positive feedback on my new photo work, a body of large format portraits that I have been a little bit unsure of. Seeing the massive portfolio sharing event on Saturday night made me realize that this truly is a time of incredible diversity in the photographic field. A vast range of different people are doing a vast range of different work, and while there are indeed discernible trends, the limited range of styles shown at contemporary galleries barely scratches the surface of what many talented artist are producing. To this I can only add, curators, please get your acts together & expand your horizons! Hopefully some of them took note of what was going on in that enormous room, bursting with new creative voices, in order to refresh their visions of what photography can be. As far as my own work goes, alas, I did not connect with that mythical art dealer/curator/collector ready to invest their infinite inherited wealth on supporting my creative efforts, but I got what I needed, which was the support, encouragement, and intelligent critical analysis from mentors and peers that will reinvigorate my energy and determination to go home and work even harder to do what it takes to push my art to the next level. While some of this work, such as trolling the internet looking for exhibit submission opportunities, designing and disseminating promotional material, writing letters, or spending untold hours in front of the monitor with Wacom pen in hand plotting Photoshop paths, might seem tedious and wearying, all the fantastic creative work I saw, as well as the success of my fellow artists I heard about gave me enough motivation to push through the sleep deprived nights to ready my work for the next grant submission, gallery call for entry, etc. One of these days it will be me opening that letter from the Guggenheim foundation! Seeing the tears of joy on the face of one very um, experienced photographer who recently enjoyed that honor, and the heartfelt admiration and genuine delight of his old friends at the conference was a great reminder that there is no excuse not to keep trying!