THE PHOTOGRAPH: DIALOGUE IN SEEING
A workshop presented at the Peters Valley Center, Layton, New Jersey, 17-19 June, 1989.
Two full days of intensive exploration into the photograph as a means of personal communication. The workshop will involve see-ing, image-making, and dialogue. Serious students are encouraged to bring a current portfolio and literature that has influenced their see-ing.
My notes:
Materials:
Slide projector & carousel
Polaroid film & processor
writing paper
readings
bibliography
camera
First morning
Introduction (exercise of participants with each other)
“Envy”
Attempt to expand the basis of the full action of photographing through language (or the linguistic model of expression).
How do images interact with us?
How is a photograph a transformative internal/external event?
Understanding one’s own vision
Expression insinuates dialogue (give and take)
The requirement of attention with action
Patience, but not indulgence
Energy, spontaneity, participation, written notes
Questions
Workshop is an unpredictable situation
Bio/background: current work, past sources, travel
First afternoon
“The Flood”
concentration and preparation
image-making with Polaroid
“The Unwobbling Pivot”
Slides from Deb Henson
Sourcing from personal experience
image-making: personal genre?
“Manifestations of Thought”
Second morning
Review images
interrogation of the level of human contact inherent in images
what this means
See-ing the image and making the image sets up various internal dialogues over and above the technical
Time and place of inception vs time and place of viewing: how to reconcile the two.
portfolios
Second afternoon
“The Gift” “Dialogue and World Peace”
How of presentation
“outering” is not enough
transference of the image, experience
Creation of the expressive circle
“The Tin Drum”
family albums and beyond
social sharing of images
One of the participants, an older guy, was a food chemist for Mars, Inc. in Hackettstown, NJ. He created the original palette for M&Ms as well as being responsible for subsequent color additions and such! He brought the most beautiful photographic scrapbooks—with prints from Kodachrome slides, and hand-lettered texts—from the 1940s-50s.