Winged it down to Boston, Thursday, for the Flash Forward foto fest.
A big thing put on by The Magenta Foundation, the brain-child of
Toronto dynamo MaryAnn Camilleri.

(In the interests of full disclosure I admit that I am a speaker at the
festival and my trip here was paid for by The Magenta Foundation.)

Where I’m staying

Opening nite was a buzz. . .a VIP reception (I’ve never thought of myself
as one of those, a VIP. But anyway. . .). Lots of folks hanging in the lounge,
then the short trip down Battery Wharf to the gallery for the opening of the
big show: emerging fotografers from the U.K., the U.S.A. and Canada.

I was happy to see that there were no huge prints, the images were
of a human scale and, for the most part all about pretty straight-up
foto-practice. I like that because these days, huge prints are often
offered up to wow! you but once you get past their sheer size mostly
leave you feeling kind of empty. Not as a rule, of course, there are
occasions where big is better. But as a de facto thing, drool believes
that bigger is not always better; and just because you can doesn’t
mean you should.

Installation view of one corner of Flash Forward group show

Anyway, I met (amongst others) Clare Jordan, P.E. extraordinaire, Maurus
Fraser, creative director at Winkreative (who flew in from London for the
affair) and Julien Beaupré Ste-Marie, the P.E. at enRoute magazine at the
opening.

Julien, Clare and Maurus

After the opening we piled into cabs, with a bunch of other folks,
and headed to some restaurant (or other) for a late dinner and a
whole bunch of yelling. . .seems that on Thursday nites Los Three
(yes, that’s their name) play the loudest-ever, bar-band, white-
reggae music, at the restaurant. Try to have a conversation over
that!

l to r: Julien Beaupré Ste-Marie, Magenta board member Doug Wallace, MaryAnn Camilleri,
Clare Jordan and Maurus Fraser

The following day, that would be the Friday, there was an opening
reception for another exhibit that is part of FF: Small Prints. Put on
by Humble Arts Foundation (no pun intended) and curated by Jon
Feinstein and amani olu.

The reception took place in The Skylight Room, Fairmont Battery
Wharf (a co-sponsor of the fest and HQ for attending artists and
speakers).

the view in and from The Skylight Room

Then we all moved over to have a look at Small Prints. . .

From “Small Prints”, organized by Humble Arts Foundation

And, of course all day every day there are free talks about all
manner of stuff foto-related, from the biz end to the online
aspects to talks about personal projects.

I’m trying to catch as many talks as I can but admit to ducking out
to Caffe dela Sport to watch the Euro 2012 opener (a 1-1 draw in a
fantastic game between Greece and co- host Poland).

Okay, this is drool signing off from Flash Forward Boston 2012.
I’ve got another 20 hours here but am going to spend it not
blogging, just being.