The Center: Visual Storytelling and Documentary Photography Projects

This dynamic workshop nurtures students’ passion for photography through an atmosphere of exploration, practice, and play. Students examine how great photographs engage their audience visually, emotionally, and intellectually, improving their image-making abilities by focusing on the technical aspects of a photograph as well as the ideas behind it. Participants work on storytelling, capturing the environment, and digital image creation using Adobe Photoshop. Students explore and discuss techniques to take better and more unique photos while referencing their own work and important photographs from the past and present. In addition, students learn to edit in Adobe Photoshop, retouch photos, and discover ways to combine, blend, and mix photographs together.

The deceptively simple cyanotype process is one of the original and oldest photographic printing methods, offering an array of rich, exquisite, and mysterious blues. In this workshop, students experiment on various papers, creating both photograms and photographs, learning to create digital negatives. While cyanotype is a stand-alone process of choice for contemporary photographic artists, many continue to evolve their final prints by toning with varying organic botanical toners, altering a print to almost any color and hue. This versatile process works amazingly well with other alternative processes including gum bichromate. Students also experiment with adding layers of gum bichromate over their blue prints to engage the full color aspects of combining processes.

Through presentations, course readings and critiques, this studio workshop in photography will examine strategies photographers and artists working in photography use to accept, negate, refuse, reject, interrogate, subvert, rewrite and complicate the "documentary" nature of the medium and its role in contemporary art and society. Students are expected to work independently and to set their own studio goals for the week. Photography is an intersectional medium. The course strongly encourages a broad interpretation of photography and welcomes artists working with installation. This course will stress the importance of an open ended approach in working with the photographic medium across genres and styles. Portfolios will be accepted on a rolling basis. Instructions on how to submit your portfolio are as follows: Submit digital images of your work in one single PDF (as opposed to individual JPG attachments) via email directly to Anderson Ranch Workshop Manager, Esther Nooner at [email protected] The single PDF must be less than 10 MB to be considered. Include 5-10 images of your work with image identification that lists the title, media, dimensions and year of each image. While not required, it is helpful to see an artist statement addressing the images you send. Include “Advanced Portfolio Review” in the subject line of your email, as well as the title of the workshop for which you are applying. Please provide a phone number where you can be reached and a link to your website. Submissions that do not follow the requested directions will not be reviewed. If you are accepted, a deposit of $650 will be required within one week of notification of acceptance to hold your place. Housing will be assigned on a space-available basis upon enrollment.