1. Jim Goldberg - Storytelling: Truth, Fiction, and Collage
Storytelling: Truth, Fiction, and Collage
By Jim Goldberg
This workshop will incorporate elements of photography, text, drawing, and possibly audio/visual, with the goal being that each student will create a narrative story about something they experience or observe during their time in the workshop. All participants will seek out a person or place within the local community to help them tell this story; this might be something as abstract as a local legend or as specific as interviewing and photographing a person in the community.
We will discuss what happens when photography is interwoven with text and mixed media and how the blending of such elements has different consequences than working in the strictly photographic. Students are encouraged to look both outward and inward for their inspiration. The emphasis will be on each student creating and telling a good story. We will discuss things such as: How can experimentation be utilized? How does one approach their subject? How can we use history, oral tradition, or personal mythology in a way to tell a story that is authentic while still being artful? Participants are expected to enter the workshop with an inquisitive mind and collaborative spirit. We may also overlap with Alessandra Sanguinetti’s portrait workshop to discuss works-in-progress.
Prior requirements/preparations:
This is a workshop for students who are interested in connecting more deeply to their own practice while experimenting in new ways. Participants are encouraged to have done some basic research on Latvian history, society, landscape, and culture. This will be a very hands-on workshop, with a focus on making, so bring any materials you may be interested in incorporating into your work.
Jim Goldberg is a Professor of Art at the California College of Arts and Crafts and a member of Magnum Photos. He has been exhibiting for over 30 years and his innovative use of image and text make him a landmark photographer of our times.
He began to explore experimental storytelling and the potentials of combining image and text with Rich and Poor (1977-85), where he juxtaposed the residents of welfare hotel rooms with the upper class to investigate the American myths about class, power, and happiness. In Raised by Wolves (1985-95), he worked closely with runaway teenagers in San Francisco and Los Angeles to create work that combined photographs, text, home movies, snapshots, drawings, diary entries, and found objects. In 2011, we was awarded Henri Cartier-Bresson Award and the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize for his project Open See (2003-2011) focusing on migration, refugees and human trafficking in Europe. His most recent work is creating an eclectic portrait of a post-industrial American city; the forthcoming book Candy (2015) deals with his earliest work and his coming of age as a photographer. Goldberg’s work is included in numerous private and public collections including New York MOMA, San Francisco MOMA, Whitney, Getty, Corcoran, MFA Boston, Hallmark Collection, Library of Congress, MFA Houston, National Museum of American Art, and others. He lives and works in San Francisco.