Signals: A Consultancy Rethinking How Photographic Work Lives in the World

A conversation with Myrtille Beauvert and Elsa Seignol on supporting the life of photographic projects beyond their production.

Images today move through the world at an unprecedented pace. They are produced, shared, and absorbed into a continuous stream where visibility is both immediate and fleeting. In this landscape, making work is no longer the only challenge. What happens after a project is completed, how it is positioned, where it circulates, and how it continues to resonate over time, has become equally complex.

For many photographers and organizations, this phase remains largely unsupported. The structures that once helped shape visibility, from editorial platforms to institutions, have shifted, leaving artists to navigate an increasingly fragmented ecosystem on their own. Questions of strategy, context, and long-term development are no longer secondary. They are central to the life of a project.

It is within this space that Signals takes shape. Founded by Myrtille Beauvert and Elsa Seignol, the initiative brings together years of experience across communications, curation, and publishing to offer a more considered approach to how photographic work exists in the world. Working with both artists and organizations, Signals focuses not only on visibility, but on building trajectories that allow projects to unfold, connect, and endure.

What began as an ongoing exchange of ideas, conversations, and shared questions has evolved into a structured response to a growing need within the field. In this conversation, Beauvert and Seignol reflect on the conditions shaping the photographic landscape today, the importance of thinking beyond production, and what it means to support the life of an image over time.

Signals grew out of conversations, friendships, and long-standing collaborations. How did the idea first take shape, and at what moment did you feel it needed to become something more structured?

Signals works with photographers and organizations on strategic guidance, from communications and projects development to career direction, and reaching new audiences.

It really grew out of long conversations we had about photography, and questions we kept hearing from photographers and organizations around how to position work, build visibility, and think beyond a single moment. At some point, we realized these weren’t isolated questions, but recurring ones that needed a more consistent response.

We’ve both been working in photography for many years, just in slightly different spheres, Myrtille in publicity and communications, and Elsa in curatorial and publishing. When Elsa moved to New York in 2022, where Myrtille had been living since 2011, we started crossing paths more often and quickly realized how complementary our perspectives were.

Signals is our way to answer these questions in a more structured and intentional way.

In recent years, there has been a strong focus on making work and gaining visibility. Yet much less is said about what happens after a project is created. What are you observing in the current photography landscape that made Signals feel necessary?

Visibility is more important than ever, but it has also become more complex, for photographers and organizations alike. There are more platforms, opportunities, and ways for work to circulate, but also more competition, faster timelines, and less clarity on how to navigate it all. At the same time, the structures that used to help build visibility—media, publishers, institutions—have changed a lot, which means people are often left to figure it out more independently.

We’re trying to bring a more considered, long-term approach to building visibility, so projects don’t just exist, but are shared in ways that allow them to resonate and grow.

You describe working on positioning, development, and long-term strategy. These are areas that many artists are often left to navigate alone. Where do you see the biggest gaps today between creating a project and allowing it to fully exist in the world?

There isn’t always enough time spent after a project is finished thinking about what it is really trying to do, where it belongs, and what kind of conversation it wants to enter. This reflection helps define how, when and where to share the work. Timing and alignment are crucial: how a book, an exhibition, or editorial moments can actually support each other, or how a project can be anchored in a context that gives it meaning. Communication is also important, it’s not just about producing strong work, but how to frame it so that it resonates with people.

Strategy can sometimes feel at odds with artistic integrity. How do you approach positioning and visibility in a way that remains faithful to the work, rather than reshaping it to fit expectations?

We don’t think about strategy as changing the work, but rather as translating it. It should help artists and organizations articulate their vision and mission clearly, making sure their projects are presented in a faithful way. We invite them to think carefully about context, collaborators, and forms of presentation. The most visible platforms are not always the ones that serve a project best. In that sense, strategy becomes a way to protect the integrity of the work.

I find it very powerful that your workshops focus on “the life of a project beyond production.” How do you define that life? What are the stages that are often overlooked?

What we often notice is that a lot of energy goes into producing projects, and much less into what happens next. When we talk about “the life beyond production,” we mean everything that happens once a project is finished. Before starting to share it publicly, there are important practical but often less visible steps: clarifying what the project is really about (its subject, concept, and underlying story), identifying the right opportunities and shaping a realistic path for how it can unfold over time.

That after-production phase can actually feel overwhelming for photographers to navigate on their own. But it’s also what allows beautiful things to happen. We’ve seen photographers suddenly find themselves visiting places they never imagined, meeting communities across the world, or receiving messages from people they never expected their work to reach.

We are living in a moment where images circulate faster than ever, yet it is increasingly difficult for work to leave a lasting trace. How do you think about circulation today? What does meaningful visibility look like to you?

Meaningful visibility comes from looking at the work as a whole: how it’s framed, the context, and how it circulates over time.The way it’s presented is more important than ever. We often see projects connect more strongly through thoughtfully considered forms, whether they’re traveling exhibitions, installations, books, activations and public programs.

One of the main challenges remains diffusion and distribution. Through many conversations across the photography community, we keep hearing the desire for broader forms of circulation and connection: how work can travel outside of dominant Western networks, and how new spaces for exchange can emerge through gatherings, collaborations, or shared projects. There is an incredible amount of work being produced in other regions that doesn’t always receive the same exposure, and that creates possibilities for new dialogues, perspectives, and ways of working together.

You also mention working with existing bodies of work and archives. What does it mean, today, to reactivate images? And how can context transform the meaning of a project over time?

Honestly, it’s quite incredible how many amazing bodies of work are reappearing today. There’s a whole new generation of curators, publishers, and spaces looking at archives in new ways and bringing forgotten or overlooked images back into conversation. We’ve seen this clearly in recent projects, for example Nona Faustine’s series Young Mothers, shown for the first time as part of CPW’s retrospective of her work, which brought another layer of understanding to her archive.

Context can completely transform how a project is understood over time. Through exhibitions, publications, festivals, or educational programs, the same work can reach new audiences and take on a different relevance across generations.

And today, we have more tools than ever, both digital and physical, to give access to these images.

Signals also works with institutions and organizations at key moments of development. What are the most common challenges you encounter on that side, and how can external guidance shift the direction of a project or program?

It probably won’t come as a surprise, but one of the biggest challenges is often time–and of course, resources. Many organizations are already operating at full capacity, which can make it difficult to pause and think strategically, especially around anniversaries, new phases, or projects seeking a different kind of visibility. With our experience across communications, curation, and publishing, we’re able to hold a broader view of how these elements can work together in ways that aren’t always visible from within a single role or department. What we enjoy most is stepping into those moments, exchanging ideas with incredibly talented people, understanding how they work, and connecting them with like-minded collaborators, or new contexts for their projects.

There can also be gaps in terms of international networks, or in how to expand a project through new formats. We often see strong potential for dialogue between organisations that isn’t fully activated. We believe in community, and we enjoy bringing people together around key moments throughout the year to share ideas, reference, and work. During one of our gatherings at Paris Photo, for example, a conversation between organizations turned into the beginning of a collaboration. We have a feeling many more inspiring things will emerge that way.

Your work moves between Europe and the United States. What differences do you notice in how photography is supported, presented, and circulated across these contexts?

One of the main differences is in funding structures. In Europe, there is strong public support for photography, while in the U.S. it relies much more on private funding, which changes the way projects are developed and sustained.

This also affects the broader ecosystem. Europe tends to have a denser network of festivals, venues, thematic programming, with a media landscape that still plays an important role in giving visibility to projects. The landscape is more dispersed in the US, with a stronger emphasis on museum-led initiatives and, outside major metropolitan areas, community-focused work, requiring different communication strategies.

Through your programs, you are also creating a space for guidance and exchange. What do photographers most often need at that stage? And what tends to surprise them during the process?

We try to give photographers a broader understanding of the opportunities their work can have. Many are focused on a single goal, or on a few established platforms, without always seeing how much further a project can reach. Often, it’s about opening up other paths, sometimes unexpected, that can actually serve the work better.

Reading about Signals, there is a strong sense of care, not only for images, but for the people behind them. How important is this dimension in the way you work?

Having both worked independently for over 15 years, we’ve been able to choose collaborators not only for the strength of their work, but for who they are as people. That human dimension is central to how we work. We’re drawn to projects that expand our understanding of the world, and we care just as much about the relationships around the work as the work itself.

Looking ahead, what kind of impact do you hope Signals can have on the way photographic work is supported and experienced?

We hope Signals can help create more connections and exchanges internationally, between photographers, organizations, and audiences. More broadly, we want meaningful work to reach unexpected places and new audiences. By giving photographers tools to circulate their work with intention over time, we want their projects to be discovered, and stay accessible long after their initial release.