An Exhibition!
Hi Everyone,
In February last year (2023) I answered an open call for railway photography for a longer term exhibition project by Garrie Maguire from the XYZ photo gallery.
I met up with Garrie late last year at the Gallery in Melbourne's Docklands for a chat, and get an idea what he might be looking for - I'd never exhibited anything before, so had no idea of how it worked, or what to expect!
Initially February this year was discussed as he had a few other things in the pipeline, including some overseas rail travel in China. With some ideas now in my head about what to expect, and what sort of images would suit, started pulling together a bit of a portfolio. initially I focused on passenger trains, and travel, but after some further conversations in March, morphed into more diesel loco hauled trains, mostly taken in 2023.
It was good fun working through what we liked, and then fine tuning it with Garrie's help, and then, looking at re-cropping and editing a couple of others for a better look.
By mid April, we'd settled on a set of eight photos to be printed at A2 size - 420 x 594mm, the same size as I sell my regular prints at, and one big one - 1200 x 1500mm one to be the feature image at the end of the gallery as you walk in the door.
One Last Time - N459 hauling its last train in Vline passenger service
The exhibition was due to open on 19 May which made things interesting as Janelle and I were heading to France on the third of May, and wouldn’t be back until it opened - not much time to get the prints made and dropped off!
In the end, everything lined up and the prints were all done by the second, and dropped off to Garrie the next morning with plenty of time before we left for the airport.
I did have time to unpackage and inspect them - I'm still in awe of how fantastic the images look printed on good quality cotton rag paper in a decent size, so much nicer than on a screen
So, how is the exhibition?
Honest answer is I don't know!
The exhibition is open from 1pm to 5pm Thursday through to Sunday from 19 May to 25 June, but since arriving home, I've ended up with a dose of Covid, and haven't been able to go for a look!
I know from the galleries website there's some interesting images for Garrie's collection of 1950s British steam, Dutch post war railway reconstruction, amongst some other important railway images.
There's photography from Jonny Tanoto focusing on Chinese high speed railway station architecture, as well as some of Garrie’s work on the Bejing Subway - I'm really looking forward to getting in for a look!
If you have time to drop in, please do, and let me know in the comments what you think.