Pixiq

After about 13 years of life in Leonard Street, the Association of Photographers is hitching up and moving out, and looking for new ‘more suitable’ premises close by. Wherever they move to, though, it’ll be just offices and won’t have gallery space. The Association’s Board could no longer justify maintaining a gallery when there are so many other means of exhibiting work (read: online) and the number of photographers requesting exhibition space is now no more than a trickle.

For the Board, it makes more financial sense to focus their efforts on their other activities that benefit photographers, and borrow or hire gallery space as they need to. They’re committed to their monthly career talks, portfolio critiques and one-off seminars, but now they’ll just be held in different venues. As will the exhibitions that they’ll continue to curate and promote.

The decision was made to close the gallery last year and the membership voted to sell the Leonard Street building in February. The last exhibition will be held there in August. The details haven’t been released yet. Come the autumn, three AoP curated-exhibitions will be held at three different London venues: P3 in Marylebone, the Hoxton Gallery, and the Truman Brewerry.

They do seem to have this one worked out, but somehow, I still feel uneasy about it. Someone recently impressed on me how important it is for organisations to always meet in the same place – unless being peripatetic is inherent, for example you try different pubs – to give them an anchor. Can the AoP make this work?

They’ve acknowledged that change is never easy, but believe that they have to do this in order to live up to the Assocation’s core values of promoting, protecting, and educating photographers, and keep on going in what are difficult times. I really hope that they can.