For more than 20 years, National Geographic photographer Michael “Nick” Nichols has been throwing slideshow parties, projecting photos onto a large screen for assembled friends. The parties started in his Berkeley, California, loft, and moved with him to Charlottesville in 1989—where, he says, “they grew to the point of insanity.” Among the 500 attendees at the last party was Jessica Nagle, who’s now working with Nichols and other locals to organize Charlottesville’s first Festival of the Photograph (www.festivalofthephotograph.org), June 7-9. It promises not only giant versions of Nichols’ slideshow gatherings, but a concentrated dose of top-shelf photo exhibits in Downtown spaces ranging from galleries (McGuffey Art Center, Second Street Gallery, Les Yeux du Monde) to trees.
 Photos by Sally Mann (above) and William Albert Allard (below) will loom large at the Festival of the Photograph, debuting this June. |
Yes, trees. Nichols’ own wildlife shots will hang on banners from trees up and down the Mall—something he’s been wanting to do for years. Photos will also be projected onto large walls, inside storefronts, and on big screens at The Paramount Theater, the Pavilion and the Ix Building. Indeed, the three-day festival will chart a middle ground between more familiar ways of encountering photos—in books and on computers—and the communal, larger-than-life experience of watching a film. On a big screen, says Nichols, “the power is there, the luminescence of projected images… This is a tribal thing.”
If this sounds like a throwback to the days before Web 2.0 (with lonely users viewing images and video on demand), it’s not the only way that the festival will stake a claim for certain time-honored traditions. Nichols and his fellow organizers picture out-of-town visitors mingling with locals (à la the already-established Festival of the Book and Virginia Film Festival), strolling the Mall between screenings and galleries “European style,” as he puts it.
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Nichols has been able to leverage his reputation to add plenty of wattage to the festival’s board of advisors, not to mention its roster of exhibiting artists. The three headlining photographers—Sally Mann, William Albert Allard and Eugene Richards—are giants of the shutterbug universe; NPR’s Alex Chadwick will interview each onstage at the Paramount as their photos are projected behind. “If I were choosing the three best photographers in the universe,” says Nichols, “I couldn’t choose three I would respect more.” Their work ranges from hardcore documentary (Richards’ oeuvre includes a series on the meatpacking industry and another on crack addicts) to fine art (Mann is famous for lyrical pictures of her children). It all falls under one umbrella, says Nichols. “Sally is a pure artist… That’s what she’s about. Bill Allard has been principally funded by National Geographic but when he goes out that’s not what he’s thinking. He’s thinking, ‘Can I do what I do?’”
In other words, the image reigns supreme. And so it will be for festivalgoers. The ultimate beauty of a slideshow party, according to Nichols? “Whenever somebody’s talking, if you don’t want to listen you can look at the screen.”
