It’s important to have good images of your work. You’ll use these to send to curators and galleries who are interested in exhibiting your art. They could also be useful for catalogues, your website and social networks, or magazine articles.
Try to organise professional photography of your work each year. If you produce a lot of work, you might need to organise this more frequently. If you can’t afford a photographer, ask an artist friend for help. It’s often better to have someone who doesn’t know the work as well as you to take photographs.
Make sure you take high resolution photographs so you can print them if you need to. Aim for at least 300 DPI images, but higher quality is best.
Ways to document different types of work
If you are taking photographs of art objects, the aim is to show it in against a neutral background. If you have a socially engaged practice or work in public art, this might not be possible or what you want. Take some time to plan how you want images of your work to represent you.
For all types of objects, try to get photographs of it in a gallery space as well as detailed views. This is an ‘installation shot’. These photographs show galleries and curators how your work looks installed in an exhibition. They are useful for scale.
If you make small, flat works, like drawings or small paintings, you could set up an area to take photographs yourself. A good camera (yours, or borrowed) on a stable tripod with good lighting can record small works. For flat works, you can make an overhead camera rig that you can set up when you need it. Make sure the rig is strong enough to hold your camera to avoid breaking it.
For film and video work, select a few representative stills from the work. Make sure these are in high resolution so you can print them if you need to. If the work is over 2-3 minutes, edit shorter clips too. This will be useful for applications. Most applications have a time limit for film and video work submissions. This is becuase it would take a long time for a selection panel to look at many artists longer films. You can put film online at Vimeo and protect it with a password.
Getting clear photographs of sculpture can be more difficult if you don’t have a big enough space to work in. Make sure you take photographs all around the work, at least from two sides. Take some close-up shots for details as well. Clear a corner of your studio and paint the walls white if they are dirty or marked. You could ask to borrow another artist’s bigger studio if it’s nearby. If you can’t clear a corner of your studio to take photographs you could hire an artist-led gallery or studio such as The Apiary. This might mean hiring a van and getting some friends to help move the work. Professional photography studios are available too. Do an internet search to find one with the facilities you need.
If you have an exhibition of your installation work, take a few hours to get as many photographs as you can. Some installation includes performance and film which you can document separately. Take a mixture of general and close-up shots to get a good feel for the work. Consider taking photographs with people in the installation to give an idea of the scale.
Performance work is best recorded on film and with photography. Use a high-quality camera so you can project the video and use it online too. Read the Live Art Development Agency’s resources on performance documentation for more information.
How to send documentation of your work
Whether you are sending images of your work to the press or for an application, always check what format it’s needed in. For open calls and similar this will usually be in the application guidelines.
Generally the most flexible format/file type to send images in is in a JPG format. If the image you’re sending is for print it generally has to be at least 300dpi. If the image you are sending will only appear online then it need only be 72 dpi.
In most cases you’ll be sending images by email. Don’t send unnecessarily large image files as they clog up people’s inboxes. If you have to send large files, compress them using a programme such as Winzip, or use a file sharing site such as Hightail, Dropbox, Google Docs or similar. Always check though that the person receiving the images will be able to access them in this way.
When sending documentation of moving image it may be easiest to send links to videos hosted on Vimeo, YouTube or similar and accompany these with digital film stills. There is a more detailed information on the LUX website on the specifics of documenting and distributing moving image work.
Always include full image credit information. So include
- Artist Name, Title of work – Year of production
- Medium
- Dimensions / duration
And in some cases…
- Photographer Credit
- Other info: Is the image a detail, a film still an installation view?
- Image Courtesy (who owns copyright for the image? In some cases this might be the gallery representing an artist, or the artist themselves)
If possible you can put this information in the file name of whatever digital file you are sending over. Failing this a document which indicates which image credits relate to which image file is ok too.
This work has a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike License