How to understand a photo exhibition

Democracy and tolerance have always been Pingyao's past work style, which has played a role in prospering and promoting the popularization of photography culture for a long time. However, with the popularization of photography, more and more people take photos and participate in exhibitions, and Pingyao's low-threshold exhibition system has also begun to expose some defects. This defect is that the exhibitors are satisfied and the viewers are not satisfied, because the low threshold leads to the inferiority of the exhibition and the alienation of those who have serious pursuit of photography and have a relatively high level. Because people don't think it is good to spend money and effort to go to Pingyao. In fact, this is not only a problem in Pingyao, but also in other photography festivals. Especially today, when the Internet is so developed, great changes have taken place in the way photography works are disseminated. How to hold an attractive photography festival is really a big problem.

Recently, he was entrusted by Mr. Zhang Guotian, director of Pingyao Exhibition Art Committee, to help sort out some photographic works that contributed free of charge for Pingyao exhibition, so as to raise the overall appearance of Pingyao exhibition to a professional and academic level. These works were originally sent directly to the organizing Committee as before, and after being approved by the organizing Committee, they were held in the exhibition area designated by the organizing Committee, which smacked of "my site is my master", but the effect of the exhibition was different.

The organizing Committee provided me with the works of more than 40 authors, some of which were documentaries directly; Some of them are subjective works of art, and there are about fifteen works by each author. Due to the limitation of exhibition space, there are obviously too many 15 works, which need to be appropriately deleted in order to give each author a better presentation. In the process of editing, I found that these friends have many problems in editing my works, such as:

1, the specifications of the works are not uniform, and the ratio of length to width is disordered.

2. The colors of the works are not uniform, and the black and white colors are mixed and matched.

3. The direction of the works is not uniform, and the banners are vertically staggered.

4. The focal length of the lens of the work is not uniform, and the scenery is far and near.

These problems are very strong in this batch of works, which reminds me of the feelings of many friends when they showed me the works for many years.

The popularity of cameras makes many friends think that if you have a camera and take a lot of photos, you are a successful photographer. The technology of taking photos with a camera can easily make many people hallucinate, but it is not much different from words in essence. They all need people to combine their scattered and fragmented photos to form a complete sentence, so as to achieve the purpose of expressing ideas.

In the era of material scarcity, photography is a luxury, and it has a synchronous period with a single painting, so people's evaluation of photos is equivalent to that of painting, and it is regarded as an independent object of meaning interpretation. For a long time, all kinds of photography exhibitions were mainly based on single works. A single work can meet people's two simple needs at that time, one is political propaganda, and the other is aesthetic demand. Neither of these requirements requires complicated image narration, that is, a single image can exist independently. Coupled with the low output threshold allowed by the scarcity era, it is natural to show a single work.

With the advent of the era of material society, the Engel coefficient of families has been decreasing, the original expensive photographic equipment has become cheaper in the overall improvement of material living standards, and the consumption of photography has become higher and higher among urban people. Photography has become one of people's ordinary lifestyles. For professional photographers and artists who use photography as the medium of expression, a single photographic work is too thin and weak. On the other hand, the expansion and generalization of social exhibition space also provides artists and photographers with more space to express themselves, so large-scale image display has gradually become the mainstream. Since it is a large scale, it is necessary to produce the linguistic logic relationship within the scale system, rather than the fragment presentation of the scale. What and how to show it? Become an inevitable consideration. In thinking about these problems, people began to produce and sum up experience. Among many experiences, the most important one is the purity and concentration of exhibition language. Every exhibition should have a single language, highlight the theme and cover all aspects. In other words, an exhibition solves a problem. The theme should be clear and the semantics clear, so that the audience can see the author's clear thoughts and professional character in appreciation.

First of all, the topic should be focused and present only one thought content and skill style you want to express. Don't say everything, just talk about things, don't think about irrelevant skills, and don't show off skills. The biggest skill is skill, don't reproduce details. For example, to express sad emotions, we should pay attention to the obscurity of the whole work, and any realistic elements should be diluted; You mainly represent portraits, so you should pay attention to the fact that the scenes of portraits must be unified, and you should not mix and match busts if your head is close-up; As a representative of the life scene, you need to pay attention to the unity of the focal length of the lens, not both the distant view and the close view, just for the reporting and photography of media magazines; The width direction of the works on display should be consistent, and banners should not be mixed vertically, or all banners should be placed vertically, and they should be consistent; Pay attention to the unity of color and tone. Smart people will even consider the consistency of particles in their works, and don't flicker.

These mainly refer to the artistic display of works. If you show a reportable picture story, you only need to pay attention to the unity of tone and color, and the others are not too restrictive.

In fact, these are common sense questions, but common sense is often the easiest to forget. It is a great pity that even some friends don't pay attention to these basic common sense all their lives.