How to create a photography exhibition
“Home and Away” | Behind the scenes
Four years ago, back in 2016, I held my very first solo exhibition! It was exhilarating printing so many of my images for this special occasion. There is something deeply rewarding about getting your images printed and framed, setting them up nicely and having people come to see your work. Since that very first exhibition, I have created many more exhibitions over the years, even creating a permanent private exhibition from scratch in one of Luxembourg’s most emblematic buildings. Each of these exhibitions was an amazing experience and made me grow as an artist. However none of them come close in scale to my current exhibition: “Home and Away”!
Be advised that if you are looking for a step-by-step guide on how to create an exhibition, this is not it. This article focusses on my personal experience creating a large scale exhibition and the challenges that come with such a project.
How the “Home and Away” exhibition for the Contemporary Art Gallery “Am Tunnel” came to life
It all starts with an idea
Ever since starting collaborating through my photography with Spuerkeess as early as 2013, I knew about the amazing “Am Tunnel” gallery that lies deep bellow the buildings of the Avenue de la Liberté in Luxembourg City. Over the years I visited various exhibitions that took place in the gallery. In October 2017 I was kindly invited to the inauguration of Raymond Clément’s “Nature’s Luxembourg“ exhibition which I found jaw-dropping and truly inspirational. Little did I know that I would have the opportunity to create my very own exhibition only two years later in this amazing location!
I was approached by the event management team at Spuerkeess in late 2018 to host an exhibition in their incredible underground art gallery. I could hardly refuse such a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! From the moment Spuerkeess invited me to create an exhibition my brain started buzzing! The sheer scope of the tunnel seemed like an unsurmountable obstacle at first. Over 500 meters of gallery had to be filled with my photography! Furthermore the exhibition would have to be inaugurated in less than a year’s time!
A year may seem like a lot of time you may think, but planning an exhibition takes incredible amounts of time and I couldn’t just drop all my other projects I was working on then to work exclusively on this new exhibition. Thankfully I enjoy a good challenge and in the first few weeks I put my mind to creating a concept for the exhibition.
An idea grows into a concept
While all my previous exhibitions, except one, had always a relation with my work made in Luxembourg, the scale of the tunnel pretty much ruled out an exhibition focussed entirely on landscape photography made in my adopted country. Thankfully this wouldn’t be a problem since travelling is second nature to me and I was longing for some time now to create an exhibition that would allow me to present my entire body of work. But I simply couldn’t leave out Luxembourg completely, since it has been such an important part of my work. Thus the concept of combining my travel photography with my local photography was born… however the title for the exhibition came only much later…
Scenography: shaping the concept
Once the concept was clear in my mind the true work was only beginning… I had to select around 100 images from my portfolio and make them work together in a coherent way. The challenge here was less about what to include, and more about what would not go into the exhibition. Over the years I have travelled to many different locations and photographed countless amazing sceneries! How could I choose one location over the other, or one picture over an other, when I was so clearly biased, remembering the memories and emotions that accompany each captured moment? Believe me when I tell you that creating the final selection of images for the exhibition was a very long process…
The final concept would start with various natural biomes: from the forests, heading into the open countryside all the way to the coasts and mountains. Then there would be a transition into urban landscapes which would ultimately lead to the city of Luxembourg. At the end, the focus would be back on the Grand-Duchy’s natural landscapes, ending back into the local forests, and so completing the circle. The exact locations and countries would not be the main focus for the scenography, but rather the biomes themselves and the colours and moods they would transmit. Often images would hang in pairs. Sometimes they would be displayed opposite of similar images, other times they would contrast with the neighbouring pairs.
Coming up with a title for the exhibition
Finding a good title to pretty much anything often represents a challenge. I like giving a title to my images, but I often struggle to put into words what an image conveys. Coming up with a title for an exhibition that would assemble 130 images made all over the world was equally challenging… It would have to be short, but still long enough to be clear what the exhibition would be about. It would also have to be somewhat inspirational, since I wanted visitors of the exhibition to be inspired and motivated to discover new locations for themselves. Meanwhile I also wished to share my deep respect for our planet and my hope that visitors would leave the exhibition motivated to protect and preserve the amazing sceneries that they just had discovered. How do you put all that into one short title? Well, it’s simple: you don’t! But you try…
The final title came up after a brainstorming session! I knew that I wanted to include the word “landscapes”, but this did not really resonate and led to some awkwardly long titles… I also had the word “home” on my list, but I couldn’t figure out how to include it properly. Thankfully my better half had a eureka moment and so the title “Home and Away” was born. I felt that it would be able to convey that sense of dreaminess and inspiration that I was seeking. From here on out any other title just looked boring to me and I knew this would have to be it! The word “landscapes” still made it into the subtitle by the way.
From concept to reality
After several meetings with the event management team at Spuerkeess, the concept, the title and the images for the exhibition were all validated one after the other. The real action was about to start!
This is where things get interesting for all those of you who enjoy printing their images!
While I am certainly used to printing, I can’t say that I have ever been as nervous to commission the printed photographs for this exhibition! Over the years I must have printed nearly 500 medium to large fine art prints. Sometimes they were framed, other times they were printed under acrylic glass; some were printed on canvas, some on aluminium, some on forex, some even on wood. I have also experimented a lot with different types of papers in order to find out what would work best with my images and my personal taste in colours and rendering. I have also made mistakes, printing on weird-looking papers or exposing framed images to bad conditions, which led to issues. Sunlight and humidity should always be considered when setting up an exhibition or even hanging a print in your own home or office.
In the past few years I have accumulated a certain stock of fine art prints, from unsold images from past exhibitions or from artist’s proofs printed for myself. My stock of fine art prints would however barely fill a tenth, maybe even less, of the gallery “Am Tunnel”! That made it very clear from the beginning that the entire exhibition would have to be printed from scratch. But this also allowed me to experiment once again with various materials and sizes. My first few ideas for the exhibition never came to fruition, either being too small in scale, too ambitious or simply too costly to create! After several tests I decided to print all images on aluminium plates which would allow creating large prints and providing them with enough rigidity. Furthermore a matte coating would ensure that viewers would not be distracted by reflections while looking at the images. A matte coating does however require more light than a glossy coating to display similar rates of contrast, that is why I usually prefer framing images behind glass or printing under acrylic glass. Thankfully the gallery is equipped with an excellent light installation which makes the large matte prints look stunning.
I made the first test prints about 5 months before the exhibition. These proofs would ensure that the images would be colour accurate, that the contrast would fit the material and that the images were of high enough quality to be printed on such large plates. Some of the images are 250x100cm large, which is the largest size I have ever printed a picture! In order to print something that big, images need to be at a very high resolution. This would exclude a few pictures that had been selected during the previous steps. I had to replace them with higher resolution images that would bring the necessary pixels for the large prints.
The main printing started about 2 months before the exhibition and was completed after a few nerve-wrecking days. Printing over 130 giant prints comes with a certain amount of stress! The prints were made with huge machines, printed on large plates that would then be cut into the different final prints. I visited the printing labs in order to ensure that everything would be going according to plan.
About a week later, once all the prints were delivered to my atelier the next part of the work was to get them ready for the exhibition, adding metal attachements to each print so they could be hanged easily. Then the prints had to be protected and packed in order to arrive safely at their final destination. Each package also had to be numbered in order to facilitate the final arrangement in the gallery. This entire process took about a month to complete and I am really grateful to a couple of family members that have helped me with the transport and finalisation of the largest prints. Lifting a 180x120cm print all by yourself is never a good idea!
Final steps
About 3 weeks before the inauguration the prints were transported to the gallery where work on the final arrangement would start. At this point the positioning of the various images was already planned. Usually I am used to setting up my exhibitions myself, sometimes enrolling the help of a couple of friends, but I am really grateful to the Spuerkeess’ team that did the entire installation pretty much on their own and giving me the time to work on the final adjustments, such as switching a couple of images at the last minute or moving some prints closer together or further apart. The entire process of setting up the exhibition took about a week and so the exhibition was ready for its inauguration about 10 days later.
Inauguration
Once the work is done, it’s time for celebration! With all the hard work that goes into each exhibition, it’s always great to be able to inaugurate such an important event and meet with people that appreciate your work. October 15, 2019 marked the official inauguration of the “Home and Away” exhibition. It was a fun night in company of friends and family and I must thank Spuerkeess once more for its very warm welcome.
The exhibition is ready: what now?
First things first: chill, take a breath and appreciate the moment! :-)
Then it’s back to work! While most exhibitions I held before took place over the span of a couple of weeks or maybe a month, the “Home and Away” exhibition stays open to the public for 6 long months. This provides plenty of time to organise various events around the exhibition, such as guided visits.
What happens after the exhibition?
All good things must come to an end. That’s how it is! Although there are ways to make the fun last a bit longer…
Home and Away - The book
The idea of creating a book for the exhibition came to me sometime into planning the scenography. Seeing all these images side-by-side I thought that it would be great to have something that would outlast the exhibition after its closure. Having just published my first book earlier that year I returned to the drawing board and started designing the “Home and Away” book… I did not plan to release a second book so soon, but immortalising the exhibition in a book seemed like an opportunity I could not pass by.
The book was only completed at the very last moment. I wished to include images of the exhibition itself, but these could only be made once the exhibition was set up, thus delaying the release of the book shortly after the inauguration.
The book is available on my website, at the Luxembourg House or during guided visits at the gallery.
Let’s meet before the end!
The “Home and Away” exhibition will close on April 19, 2020. As of the time I’m writing this article the midtime of the exhibition has been reached and there are now a bit more than 3 months left. Up to now I had plenty of great encounters during the guided visits and was able to share my passion for landscape photography with visitors. Many thanks to all those who have visited the exhibition. And if you, who are reading this article, haven’t had the time to come by yet, well, you still have some time to do so. I would be happy to meet you! ;-)
