My first photo exhibition (bucket list #15)

My first photo exhibition is kicking off on Monday and as I’m sitting on my bed in a bedroom far from being finished and the rest of the house looking like a building site (see Instagram stories), wondering if our home will be ready by the 14th July when we have people staying over, I can’t help smiling.

Doing a photo exhibition was on my bucket list but not before 4 or 5 years so when the city of La Ville de La Teste asked me to take part in their Summer exhibitions which feature numerous Artists from June to August, I got excited and then freaked out.

In fact, during my meeting with the city’s Communication Director, which, funnily enough, was on International Women’s Day (how is that for an omen!?) my reaction was to say that I needed to think about it.

What is there to think about!? you are going to tell me…

Well, a few things like budget as the city takes care of the marketing and communication but production costs are mine.
Time also. I knew the timing would be around our home renovations but I never thought they would collide so much.

And finally body of work.
I take a lot of photos on a weekly basis but finding pictures that you feel are good enough to exhibit and within your theme is a completely different story and this has been the most challenging part of it all.

There was no way, I would do this half-hearted…
If I was to show my work in an exhibition, I wanted it to be the one I was most proud of and this has cost me a few sleepless nights.

The one thing that helped me to defuse the pressure I was putting myself under was what my friend Florian, also a Photographer, told me “Just enjoy yourself and pick your favourite pictures “ and this completely changed my perspective.

So in the end, I made my selection based on the portraits I love the most and decided to include the one above named “The Way I Am” which I shot two weeks ago because it is my favourite to date (until the next shoot) and one that is the most representative of where my work and photographic style are heading.

I hope you like it…

Have a lovely weekend xoxo