The Shoreditch group met last night with a focus on editing a series of work. A few weeks in advance we put a callout to those on our mailing list:

Many of us are working toward achieving an end result with our series of pictures, whether it be an exhibition, portfolio, book or a magazine submission. As this process is lonely work and hard to complete on your own, we would like to offer assistance! We aim to have the group give constructive feedback, ideas and suggestions which will assist you in making the difficult decisions when it comes to selecting and sequencing a series. So if you have a series or body of work which is complete or nearly so, and would like to work on editing a final presentation, here’s what to do:
– Think about the end goal for working on this edit (book, magazine submission, website portfolio, etc)
– Select the images you want to bring along (10-60 depending on your goal)
– Email us as with a description of your project, how many images there are and what end goal you have in mind

Because of time constraints we planned to just look at one series from one photographer (though others brought new work to share and discuss also).

We had an excellent turnout and were very excited (and ‘titillated’ in some cases!) to look at Alicia Clarke‘s Backstage Burlesque project. She brought along about 60 6×4″ prints to work with, having an exhibition in mind, and laid them out on a table for all to have a look. It was somewhat ambitious to think 25 people could begin to make shapes out of one project, but we gave it a shot.

Alicia says, “Attending the Shoreditch LIP meet-up, with the opportunity to ask the group to help with a particularly difficult edit was a really helpful and positive experience for me. Slightly nervous before the event, lest anyone should damage my fragile photographer’s ego with unkind words, I was massively relieved initially just to find that everybody was enthusiastic and friendly and that any constructive criticism was delivered gently. After this I relaxed with a glass of wine and tried to take on board the wealth of advice being offered. Previously a huge pile of photographs taunting me with their inaccessibility, I now have the beginnings of a coherent project and a number of ideas for different edits of the work for different contexts, as well as suggestions for galleries to approach and hopefully some new friends!”

The group is looking forward to further editing sessions such as this. To discuss bringing a series of work to a future meeting, please get in touch with Susanna Suovalkama