Locating Yourself in Contemporary Photography

What is the landscape of the contemporary art world? As a group of art students, many of whom will soon have to leave the bubble of art school and enter the ‘real world’, this is a question we all must consider in the near future. We are photographers who are thinking critically about where we belong in the landscape of the art world, if anywhere at all. Given this vantage point, it’s easy to feel as though the art world operates behind a dark veil where everyone speaks a different language and no one is teaching it. While a certain amount of reading between the lines is necessary in order to understand and survive the contemporary art world, in the following pages we will do our best to demystify some of the language as it pertains to emerging photographers.