What's the email that actually got a reply? Mine took 4 tries and one dead pigeon
So I've sent probably 30 cold emails to galleries over the last three years. Got maybe four replies, one actual meeting, nothing signed. But I did learn there's a version that works and it's not the one I started with.
The first ones were long. Bio, statement, five images, "I'd love to be considered." Nothing. The one that got a real response was three lines and a single image, and I opened with the specific show of theirs I'd seen, not with me. Cold, a bit blunt. She replied in a day.
Which makes me think the whole "here's my portfolio" approach is dead and we all just keep doing it because we don't know what else.
So what's yours? The email that got an actual reply, or the opener that got you in the door. Word for word if you remember it. I want to see if anyone's cracked something I haven't.
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The three lines thing has been true for me too, but I think it is less about length and more about whether the email sounds like it was written to a person. I sent the long ones for a while, bio, statement, the whole little dossier, and I think what they read is "here is my work, please find a place for it." Which is asking them to do the thinking. The ones that landed I wrote the way I would write to someone whose show I actually stood in front of.
What I have not figured out is the dead pigeon part of your story. I need that one.
yeah the "asking them to do the thinking" thing is the whole game and it took me way too long to see it. my long emails were basically a job application to a company that didn't post a job.
the thing i'd add is the ones that landed for me were also the ones where i could've said the first line to someone's face without it being weird. if the opener only works as an opener, they clock it. if it's a thing you'd actually say standing in their space, it reads different. same three lines, different species.
anyway the pigeon thread is the best thing on this board and i'm not joking
ok the "only works as an opener" thing is real and i hadn't put it that way. i think that's why the long ones fail too, the whole thing only exists as an email. you'd never stand in front of someone and recite your bio.
and yeah i'm not joking about the pigeon either. that bird did more for my career than my statement did
the dead pigeon. ok so. second year of this, i'd sent a batch of the long ones, got nothing, and there was this pigeon that died on my fire escape, right outside the window. sat there for like a week. i couldn't throw it out, it felt like bad luck, so i took photos of it every day instead, just documenting the decay, and that turned into a whole series. so technically the pigeon is why i had any work worth emailing about at all. it didn't get me a reply. it got me the work.
your point about the dossier is right though, that's the thing i couldn't articulate. "here's my work please find a place for it" is asking them to do the thinking. i was basically outsourcing the reason to care.