This project-based lab is designed for photographers who want to develop meaningful documentary work and actively explore how that work can circulate in the world beyond traditional gallery settings.
Meeting once a month over three sessions, the lab emphasizes long-form engagement, ethical storytelling, and real-world application. The spacing between sessions is intentional, allowing participants time to photograph, build relationships, and test strategies for sharing their work in public, community, or organizational contexts. Participants will develop or refine a documentary project while receiving guidance on narrative structure, sequencing, and presentation. In addition to in-class critique, the lab addresses practical approaches to getting work seen, including:
-- partnerships with aligned organizations
-- alternative formats such as zines, postcards, pop-up exhibits, public installations
-- supporting a partner organization's fundraising
-- press coverage and how to achieve it
-- fundraising / affordable self-funding
Each session functions as a structured checkpoint for feedback, discussion, and strategy. By the final session, participants will present a sequenced body of work along with a realistic, project-specific plan for sharing it publicly.
This lab is best suited for photographers with prior experience who are interested in long-form documentary practice and in expanding how and where their work is seen.
© Edward Boches© Edward Boches© Edward Boches© Edward Boches© Edward Boches© Edward Boches© Edward Boches© Edward Boches
Documentary Project Lab Details
Dates: Three sessions once a month on Saturdays: March 14, April 11 and May 9, 2026
Time: 9:00 am - 1:00 pm EDT
Format: In person, at the Griffin Museum (67 Shore Rd. Winchester, MA 01890)
Participants: Limited to 12
Course Fee: $425 (members) / $495 (non-members)
Level: Experienced photographers whose work is, or aspires to be, project-based
© Edward Boches© Edward Boches© Edward Boches
About the Instructor
Edward Boches is a Boston and Cape Cod - based documentary photographer.
Interested in how photography can connect us, help us understand each other, and inspire empathy, Boches has photographed such diverse communities as inner-city boxers, former gang members, Black Lives Matter activists, transgender men and women, pro-life and pro-choice advocates, women oyster farmers, and recovering addicts. He regularly donates his images and services to social and environmental causes and organizations he believes in. He speaks frequently on the role of photographer as advocate.
His work has shown in museums and galleries across New England and New York with solo exhibits at the Griffin Museum of Photography, Preservation Hall in Wellfleet, the Workspace Gallery on Cape Cod, and the Ed Portal Gallery at Harvard University. Group shows include the Bronx Documentary Center in New York City, Panopticon Gallery in Boston, the Cambridge Association for the Arts, the Plymouth Center for the Arts, and others.
Boches's work has also been distributed internationally by the Associated Press and has appeared in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Sun Magazine, Zeke Magazine and the Provincetown Independent, where he is a regular contributor as both a writer and photographer.
In 2021 and 2022, he received multiple grants for public art installations for his community based project Postcards from Allston. The project advocates for small businesses, raises money for local arts initiatives, and calls attention to how gentrification disrupts communities and affects the artists who reside there.
Before his hair turned gray, Boches was a full-time professor at Boston University; an early partner, chief creative officer and chief innovation officer at the legendary ad agency Mullen where he worked for 30-plus years; a speechwriter at Data General; and a newspaper reporter, photographer and editor for Today in Greater Lawrence. He was the co-author of the best-selling Hey Whipple, Squeeze This, and the creative director on Monster's When I Grow Up Super Bowl commercial, considered one of the top ten Super Bowl ads of all time.