MOODBOARD.COM Q+A

Originally published on Moodboard.com, December 2008

Can you tell us about the conception of Flak Photo?

Well, I usually describe the site like this: "Flak Photo is a daily photography website featuring distinctive work from an international community of contributors. The site promotes interesting visual approaches to seeing the world and celebrates the art of exhibiting quality photography online." That's a pretty solid definition of the work I'm doing with Flak Photo, but the conception has its roots in blogging, online magazines and continuing trends in talking about contemporary photography.

I starting getting excited about the emerging blogosphere about five years ago. At the time, I was working as an editor with Flak Magazine. Not long after that, I began working at a historical photo archive, digitizing vintage photo collections and publishing + promoting them online. I knew I wanted to learn how to blog and was particularly interested in the work that Brandon Stone was doing with Photoblogs.org - basically developing a community of photographers who were blogging their photographs. I've been fascinated with magazines as long as I can remember and I love the Internet, so as I spent more time with digital imaging and web publishing, it was a natural transition to begin publishing contemporary photography online.

I do make pictures of my own, but I've always been drawn toward curating photography so I knew my aim would be to build a site that showed the work of other photographers. Since launching Flak Photo, I've expanded the "photo a day" format to highlight new series work and recently published photography books. I'd like to think that Flak Photo provides a place for photo artists to share their work with a wider audience. The site seems to have developed a following and is read by many photographers, galleries, publishers and editors, so I always hope that artists who show their work on FlakPhoto.com have an opportunity to get their pictures seen by someone who's interested in discovering more of their photography.

You have a constant stream of beautiful images on the site. Are you continually sent images from photographers, or do you look for new material yourself?

My review process is a combination of both approaches. I maintain an open submission policy with the site, so photographers who read the blog share their work with me on a daily basis. I'm always interested in discovering new, exciting photography and love looking at pictures, so I spend a good amount of my time exploring new work online and in print. When I see something that seems like a good fit, I'll contact the artist and see if they're interested in contributing and most of the time it works out.

I've begun to contribute to a handful of photography review panels, too, so have been sharing some of my favorite pictures from those experiences on the site. In fact, Flak Photo's winter schedule is compiled from two reviews I did this fall. I just rolled out a new feature which highlights a selection of images from forty photographers who participated in Photolucida's Critical Mass and I'm also showing work from four young photographers I juried for the ONAEBA Festival of Photography in Japan.

What have been the high points of running the website?

Really, the best part about publishing Flak Photo is that it provides opportunities for me to collaborate with photographers whose work I admire. I enjoy contributing to the conversation that's occurring in photography blogs and am constantly energized by the burgeoning online photography community. I've been showing new work on FlakPhoto.com six days a week for the past two and a half years, so have established relationships with hundreds of photographers from around the world.

I've also begun to partner with photography organizations to coordinate "group show" features that highlight work from new series, book projects and gallery exhibitions. This year, Flak Photo showed work from 3030 Press' New Photography in China, Humble Arts Foundation's 31 Under 31: Young Women in Art Photography, Hamburger Eyes Photo Magazine's Inside Burgerworld, the Photographic Resource Center's EXPOSURE: The PRC Annual Juried Exhibition, Center's Review Santa Fe 2008, PhotoShelter's ELEVATION 2008: Student Competition, the Art Director's Club's ADC Young Guns 6, Big City Press' Hijacked, Volume One: Australia & America, and David Wright + Ethan Jones' Pause to Begin.

I think one of the exciting parts about Flak Photo is that it's taken shape as a result of the open communication afforded us by email and the Web. More and more photographers and photography organizations are using the Web to talk about their work, so what I do is a natural extension of that. I hope the site is playing some part in shrinking the gap among the creative community and providing new opportunities for discovery.

Is running Flak Photo a full time job? Do you have any other projects in the pipeline?

Flak Photo isn't a full-time job at the moment. I spend my days working at an arts organization where I live in Madison, Wisconsin and publish the site when there's time in-between. I'm also working on a handful of photo + web projects when I'm able. Partnering with artists to promote their work online is an important part of my focus with this project and I'm developing some new ideas for how I can expand the site's coverage of new series work, photography books and gallery exhibitions. I'd also like to show more work from outside of North America and am beginning to brainstorm approaches to merge Flak Photo's online / offline presence. We'll see what happens…