It is easy to see within a few minutes with Jeff Dunas, the founder and Director of the Palm Springs Photo Festival, why this unique event has become a major stop on the Photo Festival circuit for serious students of the medium, both professional and amateur alike. His enthusiasm, respect for fellow photographers, and love for the medium are evident in every aspect of PSPF. Dunas’s 40+year career in photography is a showcase of all the reasons this festival is so successful. He has published 7 monographs of his photography including “State of the Blues”(a book that has a special place in my collection), has started and edited two magazines on photography, and all the while having a busy career, as he loves to say, combining “art and commerce.” In fact that is one of the underlining themes of the PSPF. As Jeff said in an interview he did earlier with David Schonauer of Pro Photo Daily;
I didn’t really make a distinction between what I did as art and what I did as commerce. For me it was all one big thing–photography. So at the festival you’re going to see ad agency creatives and art buyers as well as museum curators and book publishers. We really encourage the commercial photographers to show their work to fine art people. That’s a trend I see—galleries trying to get commercial artists in.”
Another integral part of PSPF is the workshops. Running from 1 to 4 days with extraordinary instructors, including Ralph Gibson, David Muench, Gerd Ludwig, Ron Haviv, Shelby Lee Adams, Nigel Parry and several others.
At the same time there are many seminars covering the technical aspects of the medium, the challenges facing making a living in the field, and new opportunities as the medium changes and evolves.
The complete details of everything happening in Palm Springs are at 2012.palmspringsphotofestival.com.
