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Lindley Warren recently launched a new project called The Ones We Love.

“The Ones We Love is a project highlighting young and talented photographers from around the world. Each artist contributed six photographs of the person who is most important to them, taken outdoors in a natural setting. The goal of the website is to portray the people who are loved, cherished, and inspirational to these artists, and also showcase the differences and similarities in the photographs each of them took within the same guidelines.” — theoneswelove.org

As an aside, it’s interesting to see the number of projects appearing with a focus on young and emerging photographers. It’s a good thing to happen of course but I had this experience yesterday that made me think about the emphasis on youth when it comes to judging someone’s emerging status.

I consider myself an emerging photographer. Despite being 38 years old and graduating from university in 1994, i only picked up a camera in earnest about 3 years ago. Yesterday I noticed that the Canadian foundation, Magenta Publishing for the Arts had opened online submissions for Flash Forward 2008 their emerging photographers exchange. The project results in an annual hardcover book featuring Canadian, US, and UK photographers. I had resolved that I would get my shit togther and submit the ten photos required this year after quickly looking at the submission page. I pulled together my ten low res shots fairly easily but when I went back to read the details of what I had to do next I noticed that “emerging” means quite specifically “under 34″ to Magenta. I was a bit put off by that and emailed them to see if I could get some clarification on their reasoning for setting an age limit.

So, are emerging and young the same thing? And if so, why?

Davin — December 15th, 2007
Posted in People, Rant, Websites

4 Responses to “The Ones We Love”
so…i’ve only got one year left! I am interested to hear their response to your email davin, keep me posted.
jolayne — December 22nd, 2007
What about the PDN 30 under 30? They’re no longer under 30, but you have to have had clients or personal exhibitions to be considered emerging.
n. — December 27th, 2007
PDN does present a good age range – 23 to 40 in the 2007 PDN30. I do think that some exhibition and/or client history can help in “qualifying” someone as emerging. But I’d also say that presenting an emerging body of work in an online format counts as exhibition where some might not agree.
Davin — January 4th, 2008
There isn’t much leeway for people deciding to change path after about age 18 is there? I suppose age is still the easiest/fastest way to cut down on the number of entries you have to sift through as a project organiser, and it must go some way to avoiding surprises, but it seems a little, erm, lazy? No matter how large the overlap in numbers of people fitting both terms, “emerging” and “young” don’t mean the same thing. Actually, if we were talking about an employment announcement, wouldn’t it be discriminatory to put in a mandatory age limit?

On the other hand, re. PDN: “emerging” but already with a good client list and a string of exhibitions behind you seems slightly contradictory - that sounds very much like “emerged” to me. I imagine that online “exhibitions” must be gaining rapidly in importance - but I haven’t yet gathered which ones… perhaps that’s part of the online problem: there’s not quite enough of a track record yet? And there is something derogatory and cheap about the “slideshow” type online exhibition. When the Tate Modern in London did “How We Are Now” in collaboration with flickr in 2007, like the “We Are All Photographers Now” show in Lausanne before it, it amounted to thousands of photos being shown for seconds. So in theory one could say one had a photo exhibited in the Tate, but at the same time feel slightly shivery, like a chill, evil wind had blown on one’s neck!

Of course, if I were 21 I wouldn’t even be here writing this…
Thomas Eagle — January 21st, 2008

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