This is the third year of ‘30 UNDER 30 Women Photographers‘, and as in the previous years it includes some interesting work. For me the highlight was the work by Paula Gortázar*, a Spanish photographer based in London. After taking a law degree and a graduate diploma in business administration in Madrid she completed post-graduate studies at the Central St Martins before going on to an MA at the University of Westminster .
There are others whose work I find of less interest, with rather a lot of work that might be described as ‘art school attractive’ with an almost complete lack of documentary or photo-journalistic content. Although it is pleasant to look through and does include some interesting imagery it does seem a rather one-dimensional selection of work by women, and one that might be seen as reinforcing stereotypes about women’s photography. This is not of course in any way to criticise the work presented, but merely to point out that women photographers cover a much wider range of practice than is displayed here, indeed across the whole of photography.
As well as whole areas of practice, there is also a distinct lack of information on the site, and clicking the INFO link is am almost complete disappointment. All it tells us is that the site is an ongoing project of the Artbox, “a Design + Communications Studio based in New York + Paris specialising in Interactive Media & Web Site creation” which has worked with “agencies on big brand campaigns as well as with individual artists to create compelling portfolio based web sites” and that its creative director is Mathew Hong, but says nothing about the criteria or selection of the 30 women for the site. Are the photographers simply chosen from those for whom the Artbox has designed web sites or is it a more open event? It would be nice to know, and the absence of any information makes us suspect the worst.
The information about many of the photographers is also very limited in some cases (and non-existent for one of them) and entirely lacks what is surely the essential piece of information – a link to their web sites – a rather surprising lack from a web design studio.
30 UNDER 30 is obviously based on the long established PDN 30, their prestigious annual “Choice of New And Emerging Photographers to Watch” which received nominations from roughly 70 named leading professionals in the business around the world, quite a few of whose opinions on photography even I would respect (though a few I think are firmly in the land of the Emperor’s new clothes.) I couldn’t download the PDN gallery when I tried this morning, but you may have more luck with PDN’s flash site, which I did look at carefully earlier in the year (and it was working again this afternoon.)
But you can also find a list of all the 30 photographers (including a dozen or so women none of whom I think caught Mr Hong’s eye), with links to their web sites which was posted by A Photo Editor last March when the list was published, and which I mentioned at the time. The comments on that site are also of interest.
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*Some of Paula Gortazar’s work was included in a show by recent alumni of Central St Martins shown at the Protein Gallery as a part of the 2011 Photomonth in East London – her image on the Photomonth Gallery mosaic is from her ‘Common Spaces’ series. You can see more of her work including a documentary section from which a few pictures do appear on ‘30 Under 30‘ at her own web site.