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| © John Von Pamer |
| Jen Bekman |
Jen Bekman
Founder of the Jen Bekman Gallery
On List Because: She's developing a new generation of photo artists and consumers
Secret of Her Success: Her Web savvy
Quote: "More people should buy and own art, and more people should sell it."
Website: jenbekman.com
Were it not for the Internet, there would probably be no Jen Bekman Gallery. After years of managing Web development teams at Netscape and Disney, Bekman found herself in her early 30s with some extra disposable cash and an interest in photography. She also had a lot of photographer friends who were having trouble getting their work seen and, more important, sold.
Despite her belief that "more people should buy and own art and more people should sell it," Bekman had never bought art herself because galleries made her uncomfortable. "I was always conscious of the weight of everything I didn't know that I was supposed to know," she explains. She decided to dip into her dot-com funds to open a populist-style brick-and-mortar gallery that is quintessentially defined and driven by Web culture.
Bekman doesn't just advertise on the Internet -- nearly every gallery, museum, and photo rep does that. She proactively engages the Web to solicit new talent. In her Hey, Hot Shot competition -- held four times a year -- all entries are online only. Contestants submit a bio, work statement, and three JPEGs. "I'd rather look at JPEGs than slides," Bekman says, "and we never look at portfolios." A panel of photographers, teachers, and members of the photo cognoscenti review submissions, then select ten winners. Their work is showcased at the gallery for four days and published on Bekman's Hey, Hot Shot blog. In December, Bekman chooses three competition winners and represents them throughout the year.
Bekman's roster is not exclusive to artists she finds through the competition; she also seeks out shooters who have their own online audience, such as photographer Eliot Shepard. Some of the new and emerging talent she wants to represent come to her, drawn by her personal blog (personism.com), her newsletter (jenbekman.com), or her postings on flickr.com. And she keeps an eye on how "regular people communicate to each other through photography on the Internet."
Bekman freely admits that she didn't come to photography out of a lifelong dream. But as with most recent converts, her enthusiasm for her new passion knows no bounds. "I'm one of the biggest boosters of fine-art photography out there," she says. "I'm passionate about the medium, about the people seeing it, and about people being interested in it."
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