Philly Photo Day 2012

 Philly Photo Day 2012

Philly Photo Day 2012 at Crane Arts Center filled the entire Ice Box and Gray Area Galleries with 1800 images submitted to the Philadelphia Photo Art Center website. The plan is simple, in theory, determine a day for everyone in Philadelphia to take a picture and each one is printed out and displayed. The first year of the show only a couple hundred images filled the Gray Area Gallery but this year Philadelphia totally grasped onto the idea and contributed in a big way with a huge outpouring of photographs.

Kenny White‘s son David White is the subject of his Dad’s photo and a photographer himself, his atmospheric urban facade outlined against a white sky, stark and mysterious, a formal landscape photograph. Kenny’s photograph is a portrait of his son.

Sergio Fogel‘s photograph appears to be of a girl being lifted up it a cheer, a group of his supporter’s from the Norris Square Neighborhood Project were there to cheer him on, too. DoN talked to Lindsay Stolkey about how they incorporated Philly Photo Day 2012 into their after school program, providing aspiring photographers to exhibit in one of Philadelphia best art spaces. That’s a great start to an art resume´. Being involved in a big civic art event like this is a great way to assist in the assimilation into the adult world through art. it was really fun meeting all the enthusiastic young photographers.

 

The presentation in the galleries is spectacular with twenty five images each printed out on huge glossy sheets of photo paper arrayed in alphabetical order around the space so it was easy to find a friend’s entry. The event actually promotes friendliness – it was so much fun asking people’s names and then going to find their picture and learning which photograph they thought was their best. Seeing all the photographs together is like a mental movie plays out. When you see an individual image you’re trying to focus on but your full field of vision is filled with other images transmitting their own messages into the stories of each picture, the narrative is like an Exquisite Corpse. The experience design is so wonderfully inclusive, family oriented, neighborly and friendly yet an intellectually provocative challenge to the spirit of the individual’s contribution to the zeitgeist of the whole idea. The result is a simple idea executed in a big way that is mentally satisfying and intricately socially connected.

DoN met a mathematician named Jeremy Fountain, also a photographer in the show, and he said that the likelihood of aligning similarly themed images is high because the data pool is so concentrated but some of the groupings are kind of cosmic: pairs of rainbow images, groups of children playing in separate images, leaves seeming to drift from photo to photo, cats and dogs and words spelling out Dadaist dialog. The day in the life of Philadelphia represented in Philly Photo Day 2012 shows how truly artistic Philadelphia is, it’s citizens intellectually attuned to it’s history, past, present and future. And photography has long been associated with Philadelphia as a center of innovation.

Philly Photo Day 2012 is also a fantastic public art event, more than twenty images are presented as billboards around the city, the link show a list of where the billboards are. Photographer Rob Lybeck‘s billboard is at Aramingo Avenue, man oh man, was he excited when he got the news. Using public space to promote photography as a medium of mass communication, information rich and brimming with narratives, memes and memories is ideal. These various images tell the story of contemporary Philadelphia as it existed October 26th, 2012 and represent the city in a way that disseminates the message that Philadelphia gets photography.

Founder of Philadelphia Photo Art Center‘s Sarah Stolfa addressed the crowd standing on a chair (in heels) and shouting down the cavernous gallery to address the crowd.  Sarah Stolfa created the conditions for Philly Photo Day 2012 to have that cool hometown vibe, the casual beauty and brilliance found in the city, because she is down to earth herself and wouldn’t take on a project of this proportion without visualizing the result because she is so positive and action oriented. It’s really inspiring to see the creativity that goes into the marketing, networking and money making required to make this show happen and then have it be free for the photographers to be part of the show is brilliant. But all of the work is for sale, just give them the item number of the picture and they will print you your own copies of favorites. The art is unique and historic, the proceeds benefit the educational efforts of Philadelphia Photo Art Center.

Written and photographed by DoN Brewer.

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Tagged as: Crane Arts Center, Philadelphia Photo Center, Philadelphia photographer, Philadelphia photography, Philly Photo Day 2012, photography