Photographic history meets an intriguing new model for online art platforms in Dot Red’s exhibition John Simmons: Photography is My Heart. Not a physical gallery but much more than just another “online viewing room,” Dot Red is experimenting with what the internet has to offer in terms of supporting, augmenting, and transcending the conventional gallery experience. Its founder Jeremy Quant comes from the world of gallery tours, fairs, and art walks, and even before the pandemic pivot, the company was looking at ways to leverage new media technology. Dot Red’s format now includes talks, exhibition trailers, broadcast interviews, guided walkthroughs, rich backstories, and the artist's own voice—literally.
“In a world where there's so much more media attached to things, you're forced to adapt. And I don't think it's a bad thing,” Quant tells L.A. Weekly. “I think it's actually a really good thing, to offer more to folks who can't make it in person, or to reach new audiences, or just for those of us who absorb information in different ways. Some of us are extremely visual;,there are others who love written articles, others prefer to listen.” In addition to which, the vast majority of art happens for a few weeks in one single city and then it's gone. Then all that remains is documentation. So why not, Quant’s thinking goes, get ahead of that and make high production value art-based content surrounding exhibitions and collections? Something that won’t replace the galleries, but will expand their communications with the kind of in-depth encounters with artists, curators, and experts that Quant has been offering through Dot Red all along.



The company has been organizing art collection visits, public, private, and art fair tours, and creating personal art experiences at studios, galleries, and museums throughout Los Angeles since late 2014. “What I really loved about those tours was I got instant feedback from the audience, especially those who really want to get beyond the surface of the work and deeper into the context of the world, which I always love,” says Quant. “And you can't get any better than a good conversation about the work and the history. So when the pandemic hit, we were already in somewhat of an incubator phase of what tours might look like online, because even for ourselves, we could only host so many people. We had the perfect size group of 10-20 people on a typical tour,” he says, but there are only so many of those one person can do, and Quant really wanted to figure out a way to add an online version to the mix.



“Whenever possible we would always have the artists at the gallery or booth or studio to speak a little bit about their story,” says Quant. Now, that's what the site’s exhibition trailers are for. But in addition to this feature, the viewer can also enlarge each image and listen to the artist themselves speaking in more detail about every single work—its context, process, and meaning. And with his long career, many accolades, stature in both fine art and photojournalism, and especially his generous, warm demeanor, humor, and extraordinary memories, there is no one better suited to launch these and other such features to the world than the beloved and acclaimed photographer and Emmy-winning cinematographer, John Simmons.
John Simmons (ASC) began his career as a professional photographer at 15, working for The Chicago Defender—a Black-owned newspaper established in 1906—chronicling the world changing before his eyes. Subsequent studies in fine art and later cinematography yielded a wide-ranging, award-winning, and prolific career across storytelling modes and mediums. Whether creating moving portraits of ordinary folks, helping superstars pursue their heady visions, or documenting historic moments in civics, popular culture, and society, Simmons’ mandate is for equity, dignity, and authenticity.



As the Dot Red exhibition’s curator, Bridget R. Cooks, Ph.D. (professor of Art History and African American Studies at the University of California Irvine, and curator of the landmark Ernie Barnes exhibition at the California African American Museum) perfectly encapsulated in her statement, “The selection of photographs curated for this exhibition is a modest offering of the subtle and beautiful ways in which Simmons stops time and encourages viewers to linger. They provide a sample of a lifetime of documentary and creative work in still photographs that spans nearly sixty years.”
Also covering six decades are the stories that go with the pictures. Simmons narrates each piece in engaging two or three-minute tales—from the make of camera and film he used, to the character of the neighborhood or storied past of the venue, his reason for being at the place or event, the dimensions and unexpected afterlife of his images, and most intriguingly, what the images have come to mean to the artist in the years since they were created. For example, if you click on notable works like his iconic Girl Eating Ice Cream, Chicago, 1967; the whirling, magical soul and fraught context behind Nina Simone, Nashville 1971; or the historic activist power of Parade, Chicago, 1968, you can hear Simmons reminisce about how each of these impactful works came to be. When you hear what he has to say about 2019’s Fight Like a Girl, Los Angeles, which he describes as “a photograph that’s needed,” it’s marvelously clear that his passion for witnessing the tides of change up close and sharing a living personal moment with his subject has never dimmed—and also that at some point, he switched to digital.



This kind of content not only enriches the online experience of an exhibition, but is often not available in a physical gallery setting. Not too long ago, it was the norm for any gallery, no matter its size, to produce some kind of catalog for every exhibition it mounted. That has largely gone by the wayside, but the internet has offered a way to fulfill some of that functionality as well as help ameliorate obstacles of time and distance, by banking written as well as audio/visual archives that extend the presence of the exhibition. “I won't go too far into the blockchain and all that,” says Quant, “but absolutely, a lot of the power of the internet lies in its archival capacity.”
Further, the platform allows a gallery to extend their sales cycle way past the few weeks of gallery display. “I think a lot of galleries are really interested in the post-exhibition expansion, because of course, they're putting a lot of work into the in-person show. So they want to really focus on the exhibition and the work,” says Quant. “I came up from the Downtown L.A. Art Walk, you know, I was really an intern. And then I started to work directly with those galleries, and with galleries in different districts… Galleries, artist studios, and even museum spaces have a finite capacity to hold an audience to witness an exhibition. Online exhibitions are unique because they can be displayed before, during, or after the in-person show. Besides which,” says Quant, “E-commerce is here to stay." Now, it's all about crafting an experience someone can enjoy while they’re at it.



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