A few months ago, we were contacted by Tate Britain, who’d been talking amongst themselves about a new exhibition about the history of photography in Britain – How We Are Now: Photographing Britain. I was tickled pink that they considered Flickr to be a part of that history, and had already considered how Flickr and our members could contribute to the first major photography exhibition at the gallery.

It just so happened I was heading to London for something else, so I planned to meet John Stack and discuss this potential collaboration over a cup of tea at the Tate Modern. The plan was relatively straightforward: announce the exhibition, start a Flickr group to invite contributions (on the themes of portrait, landscape, still life & documentary), nurture the group, display submitted photos in the gallery itself, have some clever curators pick 10 photos from each category to be hung in the exhibition itself, and then be archived by Tate Britain as part of the exhibition.

Heather, Tara, Maya and I worked with John and his team at the Tate to ensure that contributors’ rights were being looked after, and that the rules of submission were as clear as possible. I mean, it’s not every day one has the opportunity to submit work for consideration by a major international gallery!

Anyhoo, the in-gallery part of the project has just gone live, so people who visit the gallery can now see photos from the group pool on big plasma screens. There is also an online component at Tate Online, where you can see submissions for the project in slideshows separated into the 4 themes.

There are some wonderful photos already, and the pool will remain open for submissions until the 25th of July, 2007. (Here are the submission guidelines.) The exhibition itself will run from today until the 2nd of September.

Hooray! I love it when a plan comes together!

Photos by Rockoctopus, nick board, tidathemonk, bobby stokes, me & TateGallery.