For Behind the Lens 2021 we are revisiting work submitted to Behind the Lens Plus over the course of 2020, reimagining an online series for Women in a physical gallery.
Behind The Lens Plus: Expanded, A Year Long presentation of Women Behind the Lens
Somehow March 2020 has become March 2021, a full year with COVID-19 has passed and Women’s History month has arrived again… after a year of living and working mostly remotely with the aid of the internet, we decided to bring our virtual exhibition series, Behind the Lens Plus into the gallery in an expanded form. Having only presented a small selection of the projects submitted we are taking this opportunity to revisit the project in the gallery, expanding on and giving physical form to this virtual exhibition series. As we prepare to return to life in person we are reimagining this online exhibition series as an in person experience.
Our Behind the Lens series of exhibitions started back in 2018 to explore photography from a women’s perspective and was mounted to celebrate Women’s History month. It proved to be one of the more popular exhibitions of the year and certainly the most talked about one. Every year since we have presented a new version of Behind the Lens: Women in Photography with the goal of presenting an ever widening look at Women photographers.
2020 was no exception, we started with a plan to look at mostly younger rising talents in Behind the Lens 2020: Women in Photography paired with Visual Conversations: a conversation without words a collaborative project from a group of women well into their second careers… the exhibitions were curated, hung and ready to open… but much to my disappointment COVID-19 had arrived and neither exhibition ever had an official public opening…
In response, as we waited to see what 2020 would become, we invited women around the world to send in their photographs and stories and launched Behind the Lens Plus, a free open call for an online exhibition series. My hope was to draw a new audience for our planned celebration of Women’s History Month by providing an opportunity for photographers everywhere to participate as normal gallery operations were curtailed.
Expanding the scope of the project provided the opportunity to present a wider array of perspectives than we had assembled in our gallery exhibitions. With the help of Grace Marie DeWitt, who curated the published collections, the project has been a bright spot in an otherwise dark year. Now, a full year later, we have decided to bring this virtual exhibition series, this online collection of work into the physical gallery as our 2021 look at women behind the lens… We have linked all the original collections below providing a home for the entire project, collecting all of Behind the Lens Plus into one central location.
I would like to thank everyone who participated in our extended Behind the Lens Plus online series and a very special thank you to Grace Marie DeWitt for her invaluable efforts curating, writing about and providing a modern context for the work collected here. We hope you have found your way through this year of living remotely and connecting virtually. As we look forward to living life in person once again, we hope that you will join us in this small but hopeful look at what we have gained––this gathering of photographs from virtual space, that now exists in a physical place.
David DeMelim Managing Director Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts
Behind the Lens Plus: Expanded a virtual exhibition series in a physical space
Click the image to view the installation as a virtual 360 experience
For this gallery presentation of Behind the Lens Plus: Expanded we chose to imagine what a virtual exhibition would look like if given physical form. This exhibition brings together the work submitted over the course of 2020, revisiting the previously collected works and expanding on them with the inclusion of work not previously featured. In keeping with the original project’s goal of being inclusive, with no cost to the participants and with a nod to its original online format, we have installed the work submitted electronically in a hybrid gallery presentation. This mostly electronic presentation makes use of projections, iPads, QR codes (for contact free interaction) and a wall size simulated contact sheet of the work submitted to reimagine this online project in the gallery in celebration of Women’s History Month as we transition back to life in person….
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