Hossein Farmani's Response

Hossein took the time to respond to my postings here and here and in all fairness, I thought I would post it separately here at the top of the blog.

Hossein's Reponse:

Wesley,
Thank you for asking me to respond to you post.

You are right we failed in getting 160 great photographers from LA. We, through print advertising (23 ads), email blast, newsletters, our websites and word of mouth announced MOPLA's intention months ago. None of you or commentators send in your work. I am not personally familiar with your work. but if you think your worthy of an exhibition then you should put your calculator aside and send your works in for consideration. I am always open for constructive criticism but this posts are not one in my opinion.

MOPLA is a community event. Its not a for profit event. Its all volunteer based. Its an event to put the photography community on the map so YOU and the rest of the community can benefit.

I challenge you and invite you, to gather 50 or 20, or as many as you can, great photographer's work, together find a venue, put an exhibition together and MOPLA will publicize it for you. Do your part! Volunteer to help.

We are doing this to promote the art that has given us so much. I write the check each year to support it, a few hundred thousands dollars.

If you and your readers love photography and are part of LA photography scene. Why don't you get involve. This is as much your event as anyone else in LA.

Publishing profanity on your site does not offend me, offends the hard working photography community that is trying to do something good in this town, in this difficult times. I am used to negative people hiding behind their computers and sending anonymous emails.
There are cowards that like to complain about everything and blame everyone for their short comings and there are doers that get involve and make something better because they believe they can.

MOPLA will have a life of its own like many other events that I have envisioned, thanks in big part to positive, supporting community that has embraced them. I hope you and your reader join the rest of the community in making MOPLA a big success.

See you at the opening!

My reply to Hossein:

Hossein - I'm glad you responded as all of the feedback I've gotten in response to my posts from other local photographers has been supportive of my position, which I did try to present as constructively as possible. I will admit that my attention grabbing logo up there may have been a bit much and so I apologize for that. I tried to be as respectful as possible in the posts, while offering up my views of what wasn't working.

It brings me great joy that you are offering a chance to put on a show of local photographers' work (although I do not consider myself a curator) as part of MOPLA from that which has appeared on WCST or perhaps through a contest that I, and other local members of our community might create, if MOPLA does not plan to do so already for next year's edition.

I would love to get involved in the event and I know others that would too, but it was never made clear that this was open to us for collaboration. It seemed last year and this, that MOPLA was a top-down type of event, again with no call for entries or requests for ideas or help. I have been on the mailing list and have read each notice with care and interest but never saw such an invitation to our community.

With such a short time-frame, I doubt that organizing, printing, framing and locating a venue for an additional show would be possible for this year, though I will make some inquiries. Actually, the venue is probably the bottleneck here so if you have any ideas or connections, I'd be happy to organize something for at least the second half of MOPLA.

Otherwise, I know for certain that I and others would welcome the chance to volunteering our time and effort towards making MOPLA a success in years to come.


So, in short, it appears MOPLA is open to our volunteering and proposals for exhibitions in the future, so contact them! I'll keep you all posted on my own involvement, including hopefully helping to organize a juried call for entries for next year's event. Get involved and make MOPLA something special for our local photographic community each year.