Description

Are you figuring out the next steps on a long-term personal project or embarking on a new project? Perhaps you’re editing a project, making a book dummy, or seeking support in your creative process?

Enroll in A Short Course in Visual Storytelling to develop your practice under the close personal mentorship of photographers Gregory Halpern and Ahndraya Parlato, organized in partnership with the Rochester Institute of Technology. 

With mentorship and support from Halpern, Parlato and your peers, you will begin or expand upon an existing body of work. If you are not already working on a project, your mentors will help you create and shape one. To help the group expand its ability to understand, interpret and discuss photographs, class time will also be reserved for slideshows, readings, discussions, and lectures on various aesthetic and conceptual concerns and movements. Special attention will be paid to the creation, design, and history of photobooks, as well as practical lessons on the industry itself. The course will conclude with in-person reviews from industry experts such as photo editors, book publishers and curators, with whom participants will have the chance to make meaningful professional connections.

The course will culminate with a day of in-person project presentations to industry experts, including Denise Wolff, Senior Editor at Aperture, Jackie Bates, Photography Director at New York Times Opinion and Sasha Wolf, Founder, Executive Director & Board Member of PhotoWork Foundation; Host & Executive Producer of PhotoWork Podcast.

Making a body of work is like building a spider web. Every thread serves the greater good of the web – but hopefully that web is intricate and complex. – Ahndraya Parlato

The course will meet online and in-person over a period of four months, with participants meeting for a total of two weeks in person in Rochester, New York. During the time at Rochester, you will be given full access to state-of-the-art facilities and equipment at the Rochester Institute of Technology, including cameras, printers, lighting equipment, studios, darkrooms, color and B&W analog facilities, and digital C-printing.

Depending on the desires and needs of the group, the workshop may also include technical demonstrations on darkroom processes, analog printing, Photoshop, Lightroom, and studio lighting. Additionally, participants will take field trips, including but not limited to, galleries, museums, and rare book archives as well as group shoots. Participants will use all the resources at hand from the Rochester Institute of Technology as well as from the rich photographic history of Rochester, New York itself, which is home to The George Eastman Museum, The Visual Studies Workshop, and the Cary Collection rare books library.

With this program, we hope to create a space where you can deeply interrogate your practice, supported in this journey by Halpern and Parlato, two photographers who place personal work at the center of their photographic practice. 

Places are limited, enroll here

What we’re hoping to achieve with the workshop is to give you a better sense of what lies at the heart of your practice and to foster a larger creative community because it’s really hard to sustain a long-term practice without having the sounding board of like-minded people. – Gregory Halpern

 

This program offers:

  • How to devise and research a photographic project: What makes a good idea and how visual storytelling can be employed to best articulate a concept?
  • Practical assignments and on-location shooting
  • R.I.T. facilities: all the in-person teaching will take place on the renowned R.I.T. campus, an incredible opportunity to access state-of-the-art facilities such as color darkroom and scanners
  • Lectures led by Magnum photographers and guests
  • Museum visits
  • Critique: individually and in groups with a focus on technique, subject and personal voice
  • Editing and production: learn how editing, sequencing and design can reveal narrative and meaning
  • How to present and pitch your work to clients
  • Practical advice with Magnum staff
  • Reviews from industry experts at the end of the program: present your work to photo editors, book publishers, curators and make meaningful professional connections.

 

Contact

If you have any questions about this workshop, please contact Magnum’s Education Director Sonia Jeunet on sonia.jeunet@magnumphotos.com

 

Get Magnum news and updates directly to your inbox

Stay in touch
Learn about online and offline exhibitions, photography fairs, gallery events, plus fine print news and activities, on a monthly basis.
Get fortnightly tips and advice articles, find out about the latest workshops, free online events and on-demand courses.
Stay up to date every Thursday with Magnum photographers’ activities, new work, stories published on the Magnum website, and the latest offerings from our shop.