Volunteer Opportunities
SF Camerawork could not function without the help of our dedicated volunteer team. Learn about the gallery world, meet other photography enthusiasts, and join the Camerawork community!
Learn more about our volunteer opportunities through Volunteer Match
Current volunteer needs:
Gallery assistants for ongoing events
First Exposures mentors
Photo assistants for Portrait Party fundraiser
Hospitality assistants for Portrait Party fundraiser
Internship Program
SF Camerawork employs the assistance of undergraduate and graduate-level interns year-round. Possible areas of specialization include art handling, finance, library management, event planning, website design, and marketing. Administrative Interns learn about nonprofit arts administration, gallery operations, exhibition installation, and more, all while developing important connections within the Bay Area photographic community.
Commitment: One day per week, Tuesday – Saturday, 11 am - 5 pm.
This is an unpaid internship. We can, however, arrange for course credit.
Spring session: January 5 - May 30 (application deadline: December 1, 2008)
Summer session: June 2 - August 29 (application deadline: May 1, 2009)
Fall session: September 1 - December 19 (application deadline: August 1, 2009)
To apply, please send a resume and cover letter to info@sfcamerawork.org with the subject heading Internships.
Please include in your cover letter why an internship at SF Camerawork interests you, what skills you would bring to the position, and what days of the week you have available. Exhibition history is NOT necessary. SF Camerawork is an equal-opportunity employer.
Opportunities for Artists
CALL FOR ARTWORK
Ersatz Group Exhibition
Download a PDF description here
THE DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS HAS NOW PASSED. THANKS TO THE MANY MEMBERS WHO PARTICIPATED!
Above: Three-part mail art piece by David Horvitz
WHAT IT IS:
This year San Francisco Camerawork celebrates 35 years of supporting the work of emerging and mid-career artists. In recognition of our anniversary and the launch of our new website, Camerawork has chosen to craft a member’s exhibition with an egalitarian outline and it's open to all Camerawork members - join now! Hence the title: Ersatz Group Exhibition—meaning literally a substitute group exhibition—in reference to our shift away from a juried exhibition model.
The artwork is the mail and the way the piece arrives is how it will be installed in the gallery (envelopes won't be opened). Utilizing the strategies and conceptual links of mail art allows for a more inclusive process with a broad reach. The idea is to highlight Camerawork's service to artists by introducing artists to one another as well as to international curators.
Film, new media, photography, and video permeate many other media and virtually every facet of our lives. Your work can be lens-based or even photo-referential (ex: text pieces). Sculpture is great, though perhaps best as origami (or somehow able to fold down/pop up) since it will be mailed out flat with the fall Journal in September. Artworks mailed in should reflect each artists' practice in some way, think of it as an advertisement for yourself! This Wikipedia link provides useful background on the history of mail art: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_art.
WHO CAN PARTICIPATE:
Camerawork members (learn more about the benefits of membership here)
THE DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS HAS NOW PASSED. THANKS TO THE MANY MEMBERS WHO PARTICIPATED!
WHY YOU SHOULD PARTICIPATE:
Several artists and curators were consulted about what would be most beneficial to artists and all of those suggestions have been included within the structure of the exhibition:
• Have your work in an exhibition
Your lens-based or photo-referential work will be included in an exhibition at SF Camerawork from June 4 to August 22, 2009.
• See your work in a publication
A reproduction of your contributed artwork, name, and personal website URL will be included in the exhibition catalog, available mid-summer 2009 via blurb.com and as a PDF download via Camerawork's website. Curators Lawrence Rinder* and Evelyne Jouanno** will tour the exhibition and respond to the work by contributing a text to this publication.
• Your personal URL can be featured on SF Camerawork's website
Artists' personal website URLs will be included on the Camerawork's website links page as a resource for curators.
• You will be included in an international gift exchange
In the spirit of a creative exchange economy, once the exhibition closes all participants will receive a work from the exhibition to be redistributed randomly with the Fall/Winter issue of Camerawork: A Journal of Photographic Arts (a benefit of membership) in September 2009. Your own work will not be returned to you.
• Your work could be on the cover of Camerawork's journal
One or more works will be chosen for the cover of the fall issue of Camerawork: A Journal of Photographic Arts
HOW YOU CAN JOIN US:
• 2-D lens-based works must be or fold down to 8.5 x 11 inches (21.5 x 28 cm) or smaller. Each piece must include your name, snail mail address, email address, and personal website address. Limit one submission per member. The artwork is the mail; the mail is the artwork. Envelopes won't be opened. The way the piece arrives will be how it will be installed in the gallery.
• Once your work is created and includes your contact information, simply address it to Ersatz, SF Camerawork, 657 Mission Street, Suite 200, San Francisco, California 94105-4104 USA, add postage and drop it in the mail! NO PHONE CALLS, PLEASE.
*Lawrence Rinder is the Director of Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA). Previously, he was the Dean of the College at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Rinder also served as the Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Curator of Contemporary Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art where he organized exhibitions including the 2002 Whitney Biennial and Tim Hawkinson, which received the 2005 award for best monographic exhibition in a New York museum by the United States chapter of the International Association of Art Critics. Prior to the Whitney, Rinder was founding director of the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, in San Francisco, and served as Assistant Director and Curator for Twentieth-Century Art at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. He has writing has appeared in publications such as Flash Art, Artforum, The Village Voice, and Parkett, among others. His collection of essays, Art Life: Selected Writings, 1991-2005, was published by Gregory R. Miller and Company in 2006.
**Evelyne Jouanno is an independent art curator and critic based in Paris and San Francisco. In 2005 she conceived and founded the Emergency Biennale, an international traveling exhibition organized both in the war context of Chechnya and through a touring exhibition around the world: Paris (Palais de Tokyo), Brussels (Matrix Art Project), Bolzano (Museion), Milan (Isola Art Center), Riga (City Hall Exhibitions Center), Tallinn (Art Hall), Vancouver (Centre A), Puebla (Plataforma), the 10th Istanbul Biennial, San Francisco (Playspace at CCA / World Social Forum), Bialistok in Poland (Galeria Arsenal). Highlights as a curator also include Floating Territories (collaboration between Evens Foundation and the Arts Biennials of Istanbul, Athens and Venice 2007), Back to Zhong Guo (Guangzhou and Nanling, China, collaboration between Vitamin Creative Space, France Year in China and 2nd Guangzhou Triennial, 2005), Prosismic - a young generation of French artists (Espace Paul Ricard, Paris, 2004), Paris pour Escale (Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 2002). She has written for Flash Art International, Third Text, Atlantica, Make, and Archives de la Critique d’Art, among others.