Art Photo Index

Have you looked through Art Photo Index yet? There are so many reasons to love this Photo Index -  as a means of discovering new work, as well as reconnecting to photographers you've always admired. If you create an account, you can drag and drop images into your own private collection. This is a great way to organize work you want to remember. You can also follow different image makers, but I'm only just discovering the ins and outs of how following is beneficial beyond notification when he or she has updates their profile. 

Art Photo Index was conceived and developed by Rixon Reed, founder and director of Photo Eye, located in Santa Fe, NM. (If you're in NM you MUST GO visit Photo Eye.) The Photo Eye Online Gallery has always been a lovely place to look at work but I often felt it didn't expose me to much new work. It was one of the sites I recommended new photo students explore when I was teaching. API, as it's called, is a much larger database of images and yet is still selective since the artists must receive an invitation to load images onto the site. Read more about that process here.

I'm tiring of seeing the same old series by the same photographers (even if I love the work and those who make it). Often I feel like there is some friendly nepotism happening within the circles of curators and photographers on and offline, and it seems to me those circles are shrinking as time passes. Maybe that's just my own circle though and why I'm seeking out new work. I'm looking for artists that really move and excite me. I need to find more work that has intellectual and emotional depth to it and that's why I love this database.

Not that Art Photo Index has arrived on the scene without criticism, because it most certainly has and the fact that it is by invitation only, seems to be some of the loudest criticism I've heard. This is followed closely by the fact that artists are asked to pay in order to load more than 10 pieces into the database. I personally don't see either point an issue but maybe that's because I received an invite last year. I feel lucky to have the opportunity to show ten pieces along with my contact/website info. free of charge.