On Entering Juried Competitions

Some reflections on entering Juried Competitions --

I come to the professional practice of fine art photography a bit late in life, but nontheless with great enthusiasm and commitment. One of the things I resolved to do as a step in career development a couple of years ago was to enter at least 2 juried shows out of my local region every month.

I did this for a variety of reasons, one of which of course was that Mary Virginia Swanson, who knows everything about career development in fine art photography, told me to.

As a result, I've been successful sometimes. I've had work in shows from Vermont to Florida, from Texas to California, from New York to Georgia, and a number of stops in between. I won first prize in in one show (see the image above), and placed in others. I've had my work reviewed by a number of distinguished photographers. The same Juror accepted work for one show that he turned down for another. I was told to expect about a 20% acceptance rate and I'm running a bit ahead of that right now, which I take as good news.

I've learned that entering shows is valuable, its worth doing, in part for what one learns from the process when one has to make decisions about one's work, choosing this or that image, assessing what is strong as a stand-alone image and what really is part of a series, and so forth. The best advice I've gotten about entering is to tell oneself that what one is really doing is collecting rejection notices. One therefore is not disappointed when the rejection comes. One actually enters more shows than one otherwise would, and thus stands in more lines, thus increasing the possibility that one of those lines is the right one to be in.

I'm getting better at reading the prospectus to gauge my chances -- researching the juror to find out what kind of work s/he does, appreciates, etc, reading the description of the show's parameters to evaluate whether I have work that seems to fit, etc, evaluating the entry fee to decide whether the gamble is worth it, etc.

But I've also had frustrating experiences. And I'm also aware that the process of running a juried show is getting to be a BIG BUSINESS. The ease of submission by electronic means, the spread of communication about shows through the Internet, and the explosion in the number of folks who aspire to careers in fine art photography have all added up to far more entries for shows than in the old days when entries came through the mail in the form of slides or prints of real work.

Thanks to all this, and to entry fees that can easily run up to $100 per show in some cases, we are beginning to talk about Real Money. I recently did not get into a show in which the average entry fee was about $50, a fairly typical number. My over-polite email of rejection tried to soften the pain by telling me that there were entries by over 600 photographers. This means the income for the gallery with this show exceeded $30,000.

I know there are expenses in setting up and running an event like this. It costs something to put up a website, to handle the entries, to pay the juror's travel expenses and fee, and to stage the show itself. But I have to believe that this show was a major money-maker for the gallery. Galleries and centers that do a juried show a month are probably looking at income from such activities of $350,000 a year from this source alone.

Similar kinds of numbers probably apply to photography festivals and other events that include Portfolio Reviews, where aspiring artists pay significant fees to meet with arts professionals who tell them, in a variety of ways, that the are not the next Ansel Adams or Sally Mann.

Of course, arts organizations need all the money they can get, and I don't begrudge them the opportunity to fund their organization and their programming in this way. This is a case of artists supporting the arts in return for moments of glory and pain, and for the exceptionally rare possibility that something will actually come from the exposure.

At the very least, however, organizations that sponsor these events should, in exchange for the entry fees, treat aspirants with dignity, respect, and courtesy. Often this is the case, but not always.

Here are some things that people organizing juried competitions could do that would improve life for those who look to them for recognition, validation, etc.

1. Standardize on one format for digital submissions. Many shows specify 72 dpi jpegs; others want 300 dpi jpegs. In either case, there is no standard size. In fact, folks ask for sizes all over the map. I spend far too much time resizing images. It would be so good to be able to create a submission file for an image in the knowledge that it was ready to go when the opportunity appeared.

2. Standardize one process for digital submissions. Most folks are going to online submissions, rather than files on CD, which is great. Except that the specific process is never the same from show to show. Some folks want email attachments. Others have portals for entry, each one of which has quirky specifications (see #1 above).

3. Communicate promptly via email with entrants.

3.1. When the entry is submitted, to indicate that the entry is successfully submitted, or, if there are problems with the submission, what those problems might be and how to fix them. This would seem to be a simple courtesy. After all one has sent real money and would like to know that one's work is actually going to be reviewed.

3.2. When the date for reporting on the juror's selections arrives, either report on time or announce a delay and specify when the (delayed) announcement will be made. I have been in shows in which only the winners were notified, so those of us who were not chosen had to wait for the opening of the show to know we weren't in. I've entered shows in which there was a delay in announcing the results but no announcement of the delay, so that days went by in which I felt in a kind of limbo about whether to get the work ready to go or not.

4. Report the results of the jury process to ALL entrants, at the same time.

5. Post an on-line gallery of the winning images so that the rest of us can see if our work was worthy competition for the winners, or if we still have work to do, or if we should never have been in this competition in the first place.

6. Cut out the saccharine rejection notices. No, I don't think you will seriously keep my images around for further consideration. No, I don't need to know the competition was rigorous and the gallery space limited so that many worthy pieces had to be excluded. All I need to know is, is my work in or out, and, maybe, when the next opportunity to submit might come up.

5. If my work is in, be clear about delivery of accepted work, including how to deliver it (framed or unframed, etc), how to pack it (if you don't want work packed in peanuts, let me know), and how to cover return shipment (cash, check, credit card number, prepaid mailing label, etc). I know its coming back. The chance of your selling it is absolutely miniscule, so I need to plan ahead.

These would seem to be basic matters of courtesy and professionalism. Of course, if they were widely adopted even more people would apply, the competition would get even more rigorous, and I would get even fewer pieces accepted.  But, hey, I'm in this not to show my work but to get the rejection notices.