WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION
Do you know how to listen to your photographs—including how they talk to one another—in order to select and sequence your work? Learn the challenging art of editing and sequencing your photographs in this three-day intensive workshop at the Manuel Alvarez Bravo Photography Center in Oaxaca, Mexico. This workshop is open to photography students, to serious amateurs, as well as to more advanced photographers, who may be working on a long-term project or book.
Your workshop teachers are photographer Alex Webb and poet and photographer Rebecca Norris Webb, a creative couple who often edit and sequence their work together for magazines, exhibitions, as well as for the 20 books they’ve published together and apart, including their recent collaborative books, Waves (Radius, 2022), Brooklyn: The City Within (Aperture, 2019), Slant Rhymes (La Fabrica, 2017) and Violet Isle: Photographs from Cuba (Radius, 2nd ed., May 2018), and their monographs La Calle (Alex) and Night Calls (Radius, 2021) and My Dakota (Rebecca).
The Webbs will begin this intensive workshop by looking at a series of unedited photographs from each participant, which could be from a trip you’ve taken or an event (such as a wedding, parade, or festival)—or, for more advanced photographers, perhaps from an assignment or commission, or photographs from a long-term project, that you hope will be an exhibition and a book one day. Over this intensive weekend workshop, the Webbs will tailor two individual editing assignments for each participant.
Besides editing each day, there will also be a series of presentations and a group editing exercise. We will also touch on a variety of topics, including the process of selecting and sequencing your photographs intuitively; the practical realities of the magazine and art worlds; the difference between images in a book and images on the wall; the relationship between text and images in a series; how to select a title for your series or project; how to sequence a portfolio or website for a variety of audiences (for instance, for a magazine editor or a museum curator or a book publisher); an introduction to being on press with a book; how to work with a designer on a book; and how long-term projects can evolve into books and exhibitions. There will also be a chance for each participant to have an individual meeting with Alex and Rebecca.
This workshop will be open to anyone 18 or older, including university photography students, passionate amateur photographers, and seasoned professional photojournalists or fine art photographers, anyone who would like to learn more about how to select and sequence their photographs for a variety of purposes, including for a website, for a portfolio to present to a magazine or to a museum, for an exhibition layout, or for a book dummy to present to a potential publisher.
