100 Portraits — 100 Photographers: Selections from the FlakPhoto.com Archive

100 Portraits Australian Centre for Photography Installation, Sydney, August 2011. Photo courtesy Australian Centre for Photography

100 Portraits — 100 Photographers: Selections from the FlakPhoto.com Archive

Curated by Larissa Leclair and Andy Adams

For the past five years I've been publishing FlakPhoto.com, a website that features contemporary photography from an international community of artists. In November 2010, I teamed up with curator Larissa Leclair to produce a photo projection for the FotoWeek DC Festival of Photography, which showed at the Corcoran Gallery of Art.

This year 100 Portraits has shown in multiple festival screenings: at Snap! Celebrate the Photograph in Orlando, the Head On Photography Festival in Sydney, and the New York Photo Festival in DUMBO Brooklyn. The exhibition received its first physical show in the summer of 2011 at the Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney, Australia.

Australian Centre for Photography Installation

Following its debut, 100 Portraits screened at photo festivals in the U.S. and abroad. The show received its first physical exhibition at the Australian Centre for Photography in the summer of 2011. The installation reflected its non-traditional origins by presenting the pictures as a ‘wallpaper’ along an entire gallery wall.

SEE THE PHOTOS

Digital Exhibition

In the spirit of the public art projection in Washington, D. C., I developed this digital exhibition so we could share the work of these artists with an international online audience, wherever they are in the world. Since launching in November 2010 100 Portraits has been viewed by more than 60,000 visitors from 24 countries and the project has been featured in Wired Magazine, The New Yorker, National Public Radio, aCurator.com, The Washington Post and Visura Magazine.

Online publishing and community collaboration are inspiring forces in my photo work and this project is another part of my mission to promote significant artists to a global audience of people who are passionate about photography. The online community has been amazingly supportive — thanks to everyone who helped us spread the word! If you like these photographs, feel free to mention the project in your blog or share it with colleagues and students who would enjoy it.

Exhibition Statement

The Internet has changed the way we consider photography, and the medium has undergone remarkable transformations at every level. No longer restricted to the gallery wall or the printed page, photography now regularly—and sometimes exclusively—appears onscreen. More significantly, Web 2.0 is influencing photo culture around the world by connecting international audiences to art experiences, enabling the discovery of new work and presenting never-before-seen channels of expression and participation.

The projection features 100 dynamic portraits from an exciting group of contemporary photographers in all stages of their careers, each selected from the digital archive on FlakPhoto.com. In the spirit of the public art projection, Adams mounted a complementary digital exhibition that would be immediately accessible to an international online audience. Since launching in November 2010, 100 Portraits has been viewed by more than 60,000 visitors from 24 countries.

In some circles, photography remains a predominantly printed medium. Books and prints are highly collectible and their physical presence is still essential for many photographers. But digital media is transforming photography so it can flourish outside the constraints of traditional publication and exhibition. Contemporary photo culture is marked by a continuous flow of images online and 100 Portraits celebrates the role that a thriving online photography community plays in the discovery and dissemination of work produced by significant artists in the Internet Era. In this context, projected several times larger than life, these portraits look back at us and embody a louder voice in the discourse of the gaze.

FotoWeek DC Corcoran Gallery of Art Projection

The original FotoWeek DC projection (at left) screened throughout Washington, D. C. during the week of the festival at several exhibition venues: on the exterior of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, in the Satellite Central projection theater, at Dupont Circle and on screens fixed to trucks traveling throughout the streets of the city.

SEE THE PHOTOS

Contributing Artists

Sincere thanks to each of these photographers for their gracious contributions to FlakPhoto.com and their collaboration in producing this exhibition! Most of them have made their work available online — learn more about them using the links below.