Picturing Family: Then and Now
with Elinor Carucci & David Hilliard
Group Sessions:
Saturdays, February 22 & March 22, 2025
10am-5pm ET | ONLINE
Private Reviews:
Monday, March 3
5-8pm ET | Online
10am-5pm ET
lunch break from 1-2pm
LEVEL:
INTERMEDIATE/ADVANCED
LIMITED TO 10 participants
CLASS FEE: $775
ABOUT THE CLASS
Since the earliest days of photography in the 19th century, photographers have captured images of their families. For amateur photographers, this often involves recording important moments and events in family life for posterity: weddings, birthdays, family vacations, and graduations are all common subjects in the average family's photo albums. However, it’s not just amateurs who turn their cameras on their families. Renowned photographers such as Julia Margaret Cameron, Harry Callahan, Sally Mann, Emmet Gowin, and Larry Sultan have all created significant bodies of work by photographing their family members.
While most family-related photographic projects have depicted the traditional heteronormative family structure, the concept of family has expanded to include many different forms. From blended and chosen to traditional and queer, the idea of family continues to evolve, offering new opportunities for photographers. Tumultuous cultural, environmental, and political times add further complexities to these family dynamics, enhancing their photographic potential. By photographing within the intimacy of a family, artists can explore their own circumstances, reflect on their unique experiences, and create imagery that resonates universally. We all have a family of one sort or another.
In this online workshop, Elinor and David will offer you personalized feedback and thoughtful suggestions for advancing your project during the two group sessions, as well as a 15-minute private critique in between. In addition to leading open discussions about pertinent topics, both instructors will present slideshows of their own projects, as well as the work of photographers including Richard Billingham, Mickalene Thomas, Nan Goldin, and Cheryl St. Onge. Elinor and David will also offer inspiring photo exercises, writing prompts, and readings to be done outside of class time, which will help you hone your project.
If you are an intermediate or advanced photographer seeking to develop your new or ongoing family-oriented project, this workshop will help you refine your vision as you delve deeper into the emotional and structural nuances of your family through photography.
Elinor Carucci was born 1971 in Jerusalem to a Jewish family of North African, Syrian, Bukharian and Italian descent. She graduated in 1995 from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design with a degree in photography, and moved to New York that same year. Carucci’s work has been included in many many exhibitions worldwide, including solo shows at Edwynn Houk Gallery, Fifty One Fine Art Gallery, FoMU, and Gagosian Gallery, and group exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art New York, MoCP Chicago, and The Photographers' Gallery, London. Her photographs are included in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art New York, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Houston Museum of Fine Art, amongst many other public and private collections. Carucci’s editorial work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, W, Aperture, ARTnews amongst other publications. She was awarded the ICP Infinity Award in 2001, The Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002 and NYFA in 2010. Carucci has four published monographs to date including Closer (Chronicle Books 2002), Diary of a Dancer (SteidlMack 2005), Mother (Prestel 2013), and. Midlife (Monacelli Press/Phaidon (2019). In 2023 her fifth book, The Collars of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the Stories They Tell (Clarkson Potter/Random House) will be published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York City. Carucci is represented by the Edwynn Houk Gallery.
David Hilliard creates large-scale multi-paneled color photographs, often based on his life or the lives of people around him. His panoramas direct the viewer’s gaze across the image surface allowing narrative, time and space to unfold. David received his BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and MFA from the Yale University School of Art. He worked for many years as an assistant professor at Yale University where he also directed the undergraduate photo department. He currently teaches in Boston at the Massachusetts College of Art & Design and Lesley Art + Design. He also leads photography workshops throughout the country.
David exhibits his photographs both nationally and internationally and has been the recipient of numerous awards such as the Fulbright Grant and Guggenheim Fellowship. His photographs can be found in many important collections including the Whitney Museum of American art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. His work widely published and is represented by the Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York, Carroll and Sons Gallery in Boston, Jackson Fine Art in Atlanta and The Schoolhouse Gallery in Provincetown, MA.