Laura Noel, Guerrilla Photographer

Atlanta photographer Laura Noel is a major part of this year's Atlanta Celebrates Photography Festival with multiple exhibits, especially in what she calls her Guerrilla Photography series. This has involved 4 exhibits, one opening each week of ACP, in public but secret locations around Atlanta. Laura gives clues to the location of each show on her blog, All'sFair, and one can go out into Atlanta and find them.

This is to me an intriguing concept, both for the idea and for the execution. Laura says she started with an understanding of street photography as "an adult version of a treasure hunt," fueled by the "possibility of finding a hidden gem of a picture in the mundane world." Her All's Fair Guerrilla Exhibitions are intended to "mimic this process of unexpected discovery for the viewer"

Thus, the first show, which opened October 1st, is in the parking lot of a now defunct Atlanta strip club and motel, the Clermont Lounge, and included prizes of free prints. A week later the work was still up:

The second show opened on October 8th at the Krog Street underpass, where Laura's images joined layers and layers of grafitti.

The third show opened last week in Noguchi Playscape in Piedmont Park, a playground designed by the distinguished Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi. This exhibit featured Laura's work done in Cuba and Ecuador.

The final Guerrilla show, opening this Saturday at 3:30, is at City of Refuge, a non-profit organization that provides food, shelter and social services to the residents of one of Atlanta’s poorest neighborhoods. Sales of photographs will benefit the City of Refuge.

Definitely worth checking out.

Based on her comments, looks like Laura used this series of shows to review her own work and take stock of where she is with her photography. The idea of staging shows outside the gallery world and making prints available either free or for whatever one is willing to pay her is a radical concept and a really compelling one, exploring the concept of what constitutes exhibition space and recovering the role of art as a part of everyday life.

Laura continues her radical reconfiguring of the gallery scene in Atlanta with another image she has in a show called Post-Her, organized by Jackson Fine Art, Atlanta's premier photography gallery, in their Project Space in the White Provisions complex at 1170 Howell Mill Road.

This brings together work by a number of photographers, all printed in poster format, and made radically affordable, since all the images have been printed as 36x24 signed posters available for $50.00 each. You can see Laura's image and the rest of the work in this show if you go to this Facebook page.