Curators Look Ahead to LOOK3

3 minute read

The very day after the 2011 LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph ended, this year’s guest curators—National Geographic photographer Vincent Musi and Washington Post visuals editor David Griffin—started to put together the slate of artists who will appear this coming weekend. The annual for-photographers-by-photographers event in Charlottesville, Va. runs June 7-9. But, says Musi, the weekend will include the work of more than one year: professional relationships and the curators’ senses of balance, both developed over many years, were key in the decision process.

The three artists chosen by Musi and Griffin to be this year’s INSight Artists—the featured photographers who, Griffin says, must be people who have made a significant body of work and can inspire other photographers—are Stanley Greene, Donna Ferrato and Alex Webb. Masters talks will be given by Ernesto Bazan, Hank Willis Thomas, Lynsey Addario, Bruce Gilden, Robin Schwartz and Camille Seaman; David Doubilet is this year’s TREES Artist, whose work will be hung in trees along Charlottesville’s downtown pedestrian mall.

Although the festival does not have an explicit theme, Musi says that a documentary slant is strong in all of the featured work. “We also have this crossover because advertising and the fine-art world are really stepping up and doing a lot of what journalism used to do,” he says. And it goes both ways: he cites Hank Willis Thomas as someone who is using journalistic forms outside of the world of journalism. “The common thread,” Musi says. “is that everyone is very excited to have a foot in each world, but the work is very documentary in nature.”

Griffin echoes that sentiment, citing the aesthetic vision evident in Alex Webb’s work as an example of great journalism that “hits that beautiful spot” that touches the art world. He says that this year’s LOOK3 will place a heavier emphasis on individual shows for the speakers’ work, so that guests who attend the talks will be able to see the pictures discussed. There will be more than a dozen hours of onstage programming and a dozen print shows hung, which is more than in previous years.

Both curators agree, though, that the artists who present are not necessarily the highlights of the festival. “This is building a community and sustaining it, so that people go from one side of the stage to the other and back again,” says Musi. That community is made up of artists who attend as viewers, give talks a later year and then maybe teach a workshop some other time.

And artists who just hang out: “There’s a coffee house and it’s right outside of one of the hotels, and I just remember walking out each morning and David Alan Harvey would always be sitting out there having a cup of coffee,” Griffin says of past festivals, “and there’d be Martin Parr sitting with him or Jim Nachtwey, and you’d just walk up and sit down and start talking with a person. That’s one of the really cool things about the festival.”

More information about this year’s LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph, which will take place in Charlottesville, Va., from June 7-9, is available here.

INSight ArtistSoukh ash-Shouyoukh, Northern Iraq, April 2004. Roadside bombing attack on a pipe-line.Stanley Greene—NOOR
INSight ArtistJuly 25, 2011. Guvecci, Turkey. Jisr Shughur, Syrian Border village. School for Syrian refugees who cross over from the border camp.Stanley Greene—NOOR
INSight ArtistGarth & Lisa.Donna Ferrato
INSight ArtistErnie & Brianna.Donna Ferrato
INSight ArtistSan Ysidro, CA. 1979.Alex Webb—Magnum
INSight ArtistSancti Spiritus, Cuba, 1993.Alex Webb—Magnum
TREES ArtistChinstrap and gentoo penguins on a small ice floe near Danko Island, Antarctic Peninsula.David Doubilet
TREES ArtistAustralian Sea Lions lounge and play in a sea-grass bed off Hopkins Island, South Australia.David Doubilet
Masters Talk ArtistColor images from Cuba.Ernesto Bazan
Masters Talk ArtistColor images from Cuba.Ernesto Bazan
Masters Talk ArtistOctober 23, 2007. American soldiers with the 173rd Division, Battle Company, on a battalian-wide mission in the Korengal Valley to look for caves and weapons caches and known anti-coalition leaders.Lynsey Addario—VII
Masters Talk ArtistAug. 21, 2004. Soldiers with the Sudanese Liberation Army sit by their truck while struck in the mud in Darfur, Sudan.Lynsey Addario—VII
Masters Talk ArtistFrom Cain't See in the Mornin' til Cain't See at Night, 2011.Hank Willis Thomas, courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery
Masters Talk ArtistFootball and Chain, 2011.Hank Willis Thomas, courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery.
Masters Talk ArtistTrunk SniffRobin Schwartz
Masters Talk ArtistTouch, Girls.Robin Schwartz
Masters Talk ArtistDark Ice, The Cloud Makers. Antarctic Sound, Antarctica, February 2010.Camille Seaman
Masters Talk ArtistThe Last Iceberg, Stranded Iceberg I, Cape Bird, Antarctica, 2006.Camille Seaman
Masters Talk ArtistJapan. Asakusa. 1998. Two members of the Yakuza, Japan's mafia.Bruce Gilden—Magnum
Masters Talk ArtistHaiti. Port-au-Prince. 2011. Near the bus station on Rue Dessalines.Bruce Gilden—Magnum

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Write to Lily Rothman at lily.rothman@time.com