My First Solo Photography Exhibition
A few months ago I had the opportunity to curate and set up an exhibition of my own photography. I had exhibited my work at my university in two other occasions as well, but those had been as part of a group exhibition and on a small wall outside of the main gallery.
This time, I had the entire room to myself and I had the liberty of choosing what work I would exhibit and of doing whatever I wanted with the space.
For weeks, my exhibition was constantly on my mind, and I couldn’t stop planning it in my head. I was extremely excited and once the gallery became available I started setting it up immediately. It was a collection of analogue portraits, and I titled it Familiar Faces.
I got most of it done on my own in a couple of days, and what I hadn’t anticipated was that the hardest part of the whole process would be the moment people came to see it. What I had not thought about until the opening was the fact that once you exhibit your art in such an official way, it means you think that it is valuable enough for the public to appreciate it. Posting you work on social media means you like it, but setting up an entire exhibition makes you nervous about people not liking your art and thinking you are giving yourself too much credit, and that is something that gave me a lot of anxiety throughout the entire process. I knew about all the hard work and thought that went into each one of the images, but the audience was only seeing the final product and interpreting it in their own way, which was something I had never experienced before.
If I knew someone had seen the exhibit and hadn’t said anything about it to me afterwards, I would assume they didn’t like it. Everyone can have his or her own opinion, but it was a new kind of anxiety that I was experiencing. I believe the biggest lesson I learned from this experience was that validation from others was more important to me than what I had previously thought and that it would be something I would have to deal with and work on throughout my artistic career.
The exhibition opening went well, my closest friends showed up, as well as some other Lawrence students. A friend of my mother’s from high school came as well with his family, my mom had posted about it on Facebook so that was a really nice surprise.
In general, I am very glad I decided to have my own exhibition before I graduated. It is something that is not easy to do in the real world, as finding a space for one can be complicated and expensive. There is always room for improvement in everything we do, and I know my next exhibit will be better. That being said, I do believe that it is of extreme importance for every artist to experience showcasing his or her work in such a vulnerable way at some point in their career, and making it available for criticism. Nobody ever said it would be easy!
