San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
In sharp focus
Ninth annual Medium Festival of Photography, casting a wider net this year, celebrates the craft
In a world of social media and ever-changing Instagram filters, one could argue that photography has never been more important in our daily lives. For Scott B. Davis, however, the art of photography has always been of utmost importance. The local photographer, who often specialized in stark black-and-white images of the Southern California landscape, saw an opportunity to bring both amateur and professional photographers together to celebrate the medium and foster creativity. Thus, the Medium Festival of Photography was born.
“I will always informally describe Medium to people that we follow the Comic-con model, in that it’s a national event that takes place in San Diego,” says Davis, the festival’s executive director. “Less than half of our attendees come from San Diego, and the rest is from everywhere in the United States and even international.”
Started in 2012, the festival expanded over the years from two days to four and includes artist lectures, workshops, screenings, portfolio reviews and photographic exhibitions throughout the city. Davis says it’s always been the aim of the festival to inspire and inform.
“I built Medium every step of the way through my lens of understanding of what it means to have a community, to have complex ideas that enrich your own practice, and to meet people from all over. It all feeds a creative practice,” Davis says.
Still, the COVID-19 pandemic complicated plans for the festival. Before the pandemic hit, the festival worked much the same as other artistic gatherings, with in-person exhibition openings and lectures.
“We explored a number of ways to do hybrid-style festival, but there were a number of complications with doing that,” Davis says. “But with this year, I still can’t help but feel like we’ve successfully done it again.”
Much of this year’s festival, which takes place from Wednesday through March 13, will be online, but there have been some unforeseen upsides to the format. The festival now takes place over two weeks, and because more photographers could be available for online interactions, this meant that Davis could schedule more events.
“We have more people from more places who are attending or participating in our event this year than we’ve ever had before,” Davis says.
Davis also made it a point to highlight photographers whose work speaks to our times. This includes photojournalists covering the Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington, D.C., immigrants whose work highlights cultural identity, and LGBTQ photographers working in themes of gender fluidity.
“We have to be mindful of some of the events over the last few months,” Davis says. “It’s representative of the value of inclusion and diversity that we carry.”
Highlights from this year’s festival include a number of artist lectures that range in subject matter, format and price (between free to $50, with a $200, all-inclusive VIP pass option available). For example, some photographers, such as found photography artist Fatemeh Baigmoradi and this year’s keynote speaker Catherine Opie, will be giving careerspanning lectures. There will also be a live, interactive-based work from local artist Philipp Scholz Rittermann, as well as seminars on social media marketing.
There will also be three socially distanced exhibitions of work, all of which open free to the public Monday. The Art Produce gallery in North Park will have three street-level monitors displaying work from 60 photographers from all over the world. The Coffee & Tea Collective, also in North Park, will display the work of Medium’s Northern Exposure annual scholarships, which are presented to five photographers working in Mexico’s border states.
“It is super important to have a festival of this type not only in San Diego, but in the SD/TJ region since a very rich artistic life is lived,” says Ingrid Hernandez, one of the Northern Exposure recipients and whose work focuses on the settlements autonomously constructed by migrants in the city of Tijuana.
And while Hernandez appreciates the “great opportunity for photographers to meet curators, museum directors, as well as other colleagues,” Davis says he now realizes that the Medium Festival of Photography really does have an influence in the greater dialogue of visual art.
“Nine years in, the number of stories from people who said something like, ‘This happened because of Medium’ or ‘I got published because of Medium,” it’s amazing to hear and it’s an amazing experience,” Davis says. “It makes me smile on any given day.”