Peaches & Cream is a competition, exhibition and award initiated by Jason Shenai, the Director of the picture library Millennium Images and in collaboration with the gallery Crane Kalman Brighton. Millennium is an agency, which mainly addresses the publishing industry, providing images for book covers, seeking photography images with strong storytelling potentials.
Being Millennium an agency working with a wide range of contributors, from successful commercial photographers and artist photographers to new graduates with original portfolios, Peaches & Cream was born as a desire to create a platform for quality photography, providing visibility and support to emerging talents. This is a very important characteristic, according to the curator Federica Landi, who oversees the award.
Being Peaches & Cream an initiative developed within the picture library Millennium Images, the Director and the curator of Peaches & Cream also takes into account the visual potential of an image in compliance with literature and narrative pieces. Evocative imagery is also the main element of the online Milim Gallery, the print sales division of Millennium Images, which hosts the contest every year. The outcome of Peaches & Cream contest and exhibition comes from all the above considerations and from a strong interest in representing a variety of voices.
Courtesy Millennium Images
As Federica Landi explains ‘even though we have been assisting a historical change in the way people experience visual art and, in regards to the artist, in ways to get visibility, I still believe that the viewer’s online fruition of content happens in a form of information access which doesn’t stimulate the process of contemplation. This is why gallery and museum still play an important role: they are places that preserve and respond to that need of physicality and contemplation that so ontologically belongs to the domain of art.’
People still go to museums and galleries because they are the recognised venues where it is possible to fully relate with art, and art exists precisely in virtue of that relationship.On the other hand, online platforms, contests and websites are powerful tools that help the artist to gain experiences, feedback and exchanges which can be slow to come from galleries and museums. What is changing is the easy access to showcase art since online sales platforms are acquiring a strong credibility and artists can really benefit from them. They are a powerful tool to change the relationship between collectors and the public, effectively spotting people looking for specific artworks and providing the artist with the benefit of reaching a much wider audience than any kind of gallery.
Courtesy Millennium Images
Furthermore there has always been a degree of desire to escape the logic of hierarchical structures imposed by museums and galleries within the art world and market . This is a debate that is going on from sixties, rooted in the critique which has definitely developed further since the current time and all these new platforms respond precisely to such need.
The Internet revolution has really changed the way art is experienced and also the means by which it is obtained and viewed. The art audience has become much more heterogeneous and people are now much more familiar with the art market than ever before, therefore more encouraged to purchase art online.
This post is also available in: Italian
