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CURATED BLOGS AND ONLINE GALLERIES ARE PLAYING AN EVER MORE INFLUENTIAL ROLE IN THE FINE-ART WORLD. BY CONOR RISCH
IN OCTOBER 2008, the Aperture Foundation published a set of five soft-cover monographs in collaboration with Tinyvices, the online gallery founded in 2005 by Tim Barber. Aperture's press release noted prominently that Barber had "curated" the series, which presented the work of five up-and-coming photographers who had been featured on Tinyvices.
This was not the first time the curator of an online photo gallery had been asked to show a selection of images In a more traditional setting. Bloggers Laurel Ptak, who created the I Heart Photograph blog, and Jörg M. Colberg, the creator of the Conscientious blog, for example, have in recent years mounted exhibitions at commercial galleries, and are also asked to attend portfolio reviews. As a result of his work for Humble Arts Foundation, which began as an online exhibition space, Amanl Olu has curated gallery shows and participated in two art fairs this year. Barber himself first mounted his"Various Photographs"exhibition, based on his popular and eclectic online group shows, at Spencer Brownstone gallery in 2006. But the collaboration with Aperture, which translated the fast and loose esthetic of Barber's constantly changing Web site to the permanent pages of a book, represents the most concrete example of how influential photo blogs and curated Web sites have become.
Aperture's Michael Famighetti, who edited the Tinyvices books, sees Tinyvices as one of the first Web sites to function like a gallery. "Tinyvices itself became an institution on the Web, at least with a certain circle of people. I thought it would be good for Aperture to team up with Tim to create another platform for emerging artists."
Few photo bloggers or online curators set out to create launching pads for emerging photographers, or to establish a new curatorial voice. For some, photo blogs were a hobby. Colberg began his Conscientious blog seven years ago because he felt isolated living in Pittsburgh and wished there were more opportunities to look at photography. Ptak says she started I Heart Photograph after feeling frustrated with "going to galleries and looking through the pages of art magazines and always seeing the same photographers. I just knew there had...