LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph

The great part of hosting a photography festival is there’s never a shortage of talented pohtographers close by to capture a great moment. Our archive is full of gems. So we’re taking on the challenge of showing LOOK3 2012 in 12 pictures. Here’s what we found!

As it turns out, Donna Ferrato and David Alan Harvey share the same birthday, which happened to fall this year on the night of the annual LOOK3 workshops dinner. So we ordered up 90 homemade apple donuts, dropped in a few candles, and surprised our special guests with a “happy birthday” celebration.

Under a perfect evening sky, the LOOK3 audience spills out of the Paramount Theater after Stanley Greene’s opening night INsight Conversation. The beautifully restored theater is the home for all the LOOK3 talks.

The TREES exhibit is a hallmark of the festival featuring the the work of a natural history photographer. In 2012, the legendary underwater photographer and explorer David Doubilet transformed downtown Charlottesville with feeding frenzies, nudibranches, and the world’s most fascinating ocean environments.

What’s more appropriate than a fish-eye perspective on the sold-out David Doubilet TREES Talk in the Paramount?

Stanley Greene backstage offers a nice visual for his quote: “A camera in the right hands is the most powerful weapon ever made.”

Donna Ferrato gets a kick out of seeing “the peep cube” for the first time, which was the centerpiece of her Unbeatable exhibit. In addition to the videos projected in the cube, the exhibit featured work from her domestic violence and Tribeca projects.

Alex Webb is surrounded by clusters of fans after his INsight Conversation with author Geoff Dyer on the final day of the festival. (We thought he’d like all the heavy shadows in the frame.)

Lynsey Addario fought back the tears when the entire Paramount Theater rose to its feet to give her a standing ovation. Her Masters Talk presentation was a tough act to follow for Hank Willis Thomas, who joked “I’ve never thought of his work as a pick me up.”

The inflatable thought bubble video confessional also known as The Truth Booth made its North American debut at LOOK3. It was also the place to hang out at the LOOK3 Block Party where we closed down the street, brought in the beer trucks, and turned up the bluegrass.

What do you get when you mix flour, sugar, hot water, and Bruce Gilden photographs? What we ended up with was a 100ft mural of Gilden portraits that that the city of Charlottesville just couldn’t get enough of.

The final act of the 2012 festival arrived when photographer Arlene Gottfried emerged from the audience with a gospel choir behind her, a microphone in hand, and a career’s worth of photographs projected above the Pavilion stage.

The entire LOOK3 team jumped up on stage the final day to take a bow and put a cap on 3 days of peace, love, and photography.

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