Here are a couple of tiny interviews I did for a paper/article with Rob Haggart of A Photo Editor and Lindley Warren of We Projects (The Ones We Love, etc). If the article doesn’t end up in print, I’ll direct you to it online, but for now, here are the interviews.

Interview with Rob Haggart

Via Email

IAA: I remember the blog comments, but it’s been a little while since you did your folio project, so I’d like to hear if there has been any significant response since then. Obviously you’re continuing to think about digital presentation of work, since you’re now working with a team on your photographer portfolios project. Was that a direct result of your free project?

RH: The free projects are experiments. I wanted to see how difficult it would be to assemble and if it would work. It’s interesting though because when you’re thinking free you know it’s not going to be perfect but then the design and way it looks makes it seem cheap and unprofessional and that’s a huge mistake so I ended up getting my business partner involved to make it better. Ultimately I proved that something like that can be very useful. Lots of people found photographers and lots of photographers got jobs because of it.

IAA: Also, has there been a noticeable benefit to any of the photographers included? From my own website stats I know I’ve gotten a few hits from the site, and they tend to visit for a relatively large amount of time. I’m not sure if that’s the average result, perhaps you’ve heard back from others. Do you think a specifically targeted low hit amount with a large amount of time spent on the site is a standard result? And is this what you hoped for? Worse, better?

RH: Yeah the idea is that the photographers are vetted first so you know the results are good then there’s a preview image so you know when you visit it’s because you’re interested in the photographer to give them a job and that leads to an extended visit.

IAA: I’m hoping to encourage people to continue to run projects, and show it can be beneficiary to themselves (in terms of exposure and knowledge – I know I’ve learned a lot from looking at and selecting from work) and their peers (encouraging community participation and creation of new work).

RH: My philosophy with the internet with regards to reaching consumers and clients is that it’s massive and you need to place yourself for casual encounters. Everyone knows how to get into someone’s face with their work but how do you get someone to run into you because that a more powerful experience. The only way to do projects that will be distributed and participate in all manner of sites that are right for your work because in this day and age you never know where a client may come from and sometimes consumers can turn into clients.

Interview with Lindley Warren

Via Email

IAA: I was wondering how the We project had gone for you. You’ve offered your time and webspace for free to feature other’s work. Has it been educational? Or even good for your own publicity? It’s wonderful to do projects for the kicks, but even cans of beans add up (not to mention film costs). I know I’ve had to cut back on my installation work to have a couple shows where stuff was actually for sale, to try and fight a little of my school debt. Let me know any thoughts you might have.

LW: We Projects has been great…I mean, it must’ve been somewhat great if I’m just now starting another project..that isn’t even part of We Projects for that matter. One thing I’ve learned about myself though is that I’m obsessed with how text and images relate. I love having people say things through their photos– with some way of words. I’ve found I want these people’s images to actually speak and say something– to somehow be valuable. It has been annoying at times, to get a ton of e-mails from people and to not really like any of the photos that people want to submit– I became really jaded for a while, but I just had to take a break for a bit and just ignore e-mails more or less for about a month. However, for The Photographic Dictionary I’m going to be working with another photographer, Mick van de Wiel, to get submissions and manage the site- which makes it fresh and exciting to not be doing this project alone. As far as  my own publicity, I’m not really sure. I mean, some people around the internet and such probably know my name because of We Projects…however, I haven’t worked very much at all on my personal photography work in the past year, so I don’t know as far as that goes. It was funny to see my name in Elle magazine, it was the first time anyone here where I lived seemed interested in my project or thought it was something cool.