(This is a guest post by David Talley, a photographer from Portland, OR, and the founder of Concept Collaboration, which you can support through this Kickstarter campaign.)
Concept Collaboration is an expression of the photography world’s need for community and collaborative creation, the need for a centralized place for photographers around the globe to connect through a specific theme. More than a project, it is a photographic movement to change the way we as photographers create and interact with each other through our craft.
Starting in January 2015, we will be offering photographers all around the world the opportunity to build community and create art by connecting through a single, centralized concept presented at the beginning of every month.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v__4wsbwUD8&w=853&h=480%5D
Concept Collaboration works like this:
1) Each month in 2015, we’ll release a concept to photographers around the world via conceptcollaboration.com and various social media outlets, such as Flickr and Facebook. Thousands of photographers around the world will come together, whether online or in-person, to create art based on the concept.
2) We’ll host A Collaboration Event, or photography meetup, every month in locations worldwide. This event is free to attend, and comes complete with props, models, location, sets, and an array of wardrobes to utilize in the creation of your photos.
3) Project participants can also utilize our website and Flickr to host their own meetup for that month’s concept, connecting with other nearby photographers.
4) At the end of the month, all collaborative images created for that month’s concept are uploaded to conceptcollaboration.com, Flickr, and other social media outlets, with the hashtag #conceptcollab.
5) All submitted images are featured and displayed on conceptcollaboration.com in a beautiful gallery. The creators of the two best photographs of the month, as determined by guest judges, receive a prize package of wardrobe, props, and photographic equipment to enable them to continue creating.
Origins of the idea
I began creating conceptual images in March of 2011, and as I worked through the ranks of artistic growth, I felt the incredibly deep desire for a community in which I could safely and effectively create work. Even more, I quickly developed a strong desire for fresh concepts, new ideas, and a community that created from the same emotional and mental space as I did. I began uploading work to Flickr in 2011, during a 365 project that changed my life for the better – but for reasons you may not expect.
About halfway through my 365 conceptual photography project, I encountered what, at the time, was a deeply painful situation: going through my first heartbreak. I created conceptual art from this place of heartbreak because I had no other outlet for my 18-year old, sobbing-in-the-night emotions, and didn’t want to burden my friends with the pain of my turmoil. Another photographer on Flickr noticed that I was creating and uploading some deeply emotional work, and reached out to me through Flickr Mail. Fortunately, this heartfelt and supportive message from Ethan Coverstone was a welcome gesture. He helped me through one of the roughest times of my life, and we quickly became friends.
Ethan lived in Indiana at the time, but we developed regular conversation, eventually added each other on Facebook, and resolved to meet up to collaborate on some conceptual photographs the coming summer on his parent’s farm in rural Indiana. What happened next was extraordinary – our two-person meet up grew to a full-blown network of conceptual photographer friends on Flickr and Facebook who decided to meet each other for the first time on a farm in rural Indiana in the summer of 2012.
This meet up of 30 photographers began a string of events which have poured out in to the lives of every single photographer I am connected with. We have all grown together through collaboration at meet ups all over the world – everywhere from Germany to Canada to Washington D.C. We have become roommates, lovers, friends, business partners, plane-buddies, campers, hikers, frisbee-throwers, models – all because we decided to collaborate together, both online and in-person through the medium of conceptual photography. I speak for all of us when I say we wouldn’t be able to create half the images we do without this collaborative community. Since our first meet up in Indiana, It has changed our lives and the lives of all those we have come in to contact with.
We hope Concept Collaboration will change the operating parameters of the photography world. We want to encourage community and collaboration, and support better way to create art and develop relationships through photography. It is my hope that the Flickr community will support this project on Kickstarter, and join us to create the world’s largest collection of collaborative visual media in the world. Join us this January!