FINDING YOUR VISION: NYC 2019

©Alex Webb, from the upcoming book with Rebecca Norris Webb: Brooklyn: The City Within, Aperture fall 2019

Finding Your Vision: NYC 2019, from Friday May 3, 2019-Wednesday May 8, 2019

This six-day workshop will be about finding your own unique vision of New York City by using the camera to explore the city in a direct, spontaneous way. Open to both serious amateurs and professionals alike, it is a workshop that will emphasize the development of your own personal way of seeing photographically. This workshop will also be about learning how to edit your work intuitively, and also include discussions about how to take your photography to the next level.

International students can request early acceptance. 

DEADLINE FOR EARLY ACCEPTANCE: Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2018

NOTIFICATION OF EARLY ACCEPTANCE: Monday, Sept. 24, 2018

FINAL APPLICATION DEADLINE: Monday, Sept. 24, 2018

Please note: This workshop is not for photographers who radically alter their photographs digitally.

TO BE CONSIDERED FOR THE WORKSHOP

All former workshop participants of Alex and Rebecca’s are invited to apply (no need to send images, since we already know your work), but other photographers will also be considered. If you’ve never taken a workshop from Alex and Rebecca, please email 10jpgs (72dpi; 15 inches longest side) that represent who you are as a photographer, or direct us to a series or two on your website or other online link.  If you work in a series, please include a selection from one or two personal projects –– the work that represents your passions, your obsessions. (We aren’t interested in photographs done simply to satisfy an editor or art director or client.)  Also include a short description of why you’d like to take this workshop, and what or where you’d like to photograph for the week (no more than 150 words in a word doc). Also include a short bio (not more than 100 words) that includes where you live and something about your relationship to photography.

Please write on the email’s subject line—FYV: NYC 2019—and email your application to: webbnorriswebbworkshops@gmail.com

OTHER WORKSHOP DETAILS

WORKSHOP COST: $1900 USD

WORKSHOP LIMIT: 14 PHOTOGRAPHERS

WORKSHOP LOCATION: NYFA, 20 Jay Street, 7th Floor, Dumbo, Brooklyn

THE SCHEDULE

There are two main components of this class: the spontaneous act of photographing and intuitive editing.  The workshop will begin with Alex and Rebecca, a creative team who often edit projects together (including their joint books Memory City and Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb on Street Photography and the Poetic Image), who will critique each participant’s past work as a starting off point for a larger discussion about various photographic issues. By that first afternoon, participants will be working on their first assignment, which they will choose themselves. It may be a specific street, neighborhood, subculture, ethnic group, profession, family or individual; it may be photographing various events or festivals around the city, such as the Cinco de Mayo celebrations in Mexican communities around the city; it may be continuing work on an ongoing project in New York City; but it must be something that you’re passionate enough to return to every day to photograph.

 

For the rest of the workshop, we will meet in the mornings and critique as a group each student’s ongoing work. Throughout the workshop, we will try to build a coherent set of images for each photographer that will begin to represent his or her photographic stance or attitude toward the city of New York. We will view this work as a group at the end of the workshop.

 

Besides photographing and editing each day, there will also be print and book demonstrations and an editing exercise.  We will also touch on a variety of topics, including the process of photographing spontaneously and intuitively; how to photograph in cultures other than one’s own; the relationship between images (such as the sequencing and juxtaposition of photographs); how to edit photographs intuitively; an introduction on being on press with a book; how to work with a designer on a book; the practical realities of the magazine and art worlds; the emotional and psychological implications of working in color vs. black and white; the difference between images in a book and images on the wall; and how long-term projects can evolve into books and exhibitions. There will also be a chance for each participant to have a one-on-one meeting with Alex and Rebecca, and, near the end of the workshop, there is an optional long-term project review for those participants who’d like Alex and Rebecca to review and discuss a long-term project or work-in-progress that the participant is passionate about.

WHAT TO BRING THE FIRST DAY

The first day we would like all participants to bring about 30 PRINTS (NOT digital files), representing the work that they feel best represents who they are as photographers. We are interested in each participant’s individual vision, rather than whether he or she can work professionally or not. So bring the personal project or projects –– the work that represents your passions, your obsessions –– not the set of portraits done simply to satisfy an editor or art director. For the first reviews, we find that working with prints has huge benefits. The prints do not have to be fine prints: they can be cheap 4×6 machine prints, inkjet prints, etc. – just prints that enable us to see the image.

 

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION FOR THE WORKSHOP

During the week all participants will be photographing every day, except the last day. We encourage you to work digitally, but film is also an option, although a more complicated one. (For film, you’ll be responsible for film processing each night with work prints ready each morning before class; on Thursday afternoon, you’ll also need to have scans made of your week’s final edit –– for instance, at a NYC photo lab ––for the final slide show Friday night.) Those working digitally must bring a laptop and memory stick or portable hard drive. All work needs to be downloaded into a single workshop computer attached to a digital projector. (We do not have time to shut down the projector and hook up individual laptops.) We need to be able to see work (from the previous day) at the beginning of the class everyday.

©Rebecca Norris Webb, The Night Before the Queen Died, from the upcoming book with Alex Webb, Brooklyn: The City Within, fall 2019, Aperture Foundation