This online workshop is designed to help students develop a long term photography project within a supportive, and productive group learning environment. Participants will share their work as it evolves over the six sessions (twelve weeks), meeting every other week, to allow time to create in between critiques. Working on a long-term project is a powerful tool for exploring and understanding contemporary culture and personal issues, that are important to us. It is a very gratifying creative experience as we each work from our own intimate visual, and personal perspective. Participating in the structured format of this workshop, and reflecting on one another's work will help activate and engage your process. We will discuss the tools of observation, description and collaboration to help you better engage with the nature and challenges of long-term documentary projects. Our goal will be to enable compassionate and constructive engagement with each other, our subjects, and our audience - through visual imagery. Some of the challenges we will grapple with: -What do you want your photographs to say? -How does the form you have chosen work to express your ideas? -How can you move forward with a project, and allow it to evolve? Some of the skills we will address: -Observing, describing, listening and reflecting on images in a conscious format. -Making informed decisions about subject matter, composition and framing. -Exploring ways of using imagery to tell a story beyond surface representation. -Understanding your own role as an insider or outsider (or combination), vis-a-vis your subject, and strategies for photographing strangers or people close to you. -Methods for creating narrative through editing and sequencing your work, including incorporating text or audio. -Finding opportunities for pitching projects. Participants may work on an on-going project, begin a new one, or simply work on exploring new ways of seeing and thinking about aspects of their photographic process. The class will include group and individual critiques, and culminate in a final edited sequence of photographs. All processes and camera formats are welcomed, including Smartphone. Class is limited to eight students. Level: Intermediate - Advanced. Dates: Six sessions, every other week, online class, (Wednesday, Jan 29 - April 9, 2025). Times: 6:30pm - 8:30pm, EST. Dates: January 29 February 12 February 26 March 12 March 26 April 9 Course Fee: $695 members / $745 non-members (non-members pricing includes a membership to the Griffin Museum, a $75 value). About The Instructor:
Lisa Kessler is a photographer and educator based in Boston. Her long-term documentary projects include the idea of the color pink in America; sexual abuse and the rise of the survivors' movement; young people in our public schools; and portraits of families coping with homicide.
Lisa's work has been supported by the George Gund Foundation, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Honickman Foundation and Center for Documentary Studies, the Photographic Resource Center, and Pictures of the Year International. She is currently working on a new project about the final year of the last public middle school in Boston.
Her work is in the permanent collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Teaching Museum of Lehigh University. She currently teaches Documentary Photography at Endicott College. Her work is represented by Anderson Yezerski Gallery.
Lisakessler.com
@lisakesslerboston