DEVELOPING YOUR PHOTOGRAPHIC PROJECT WITH                                                 LEWIS WATTS

Saturday, August 22nd, 2015
9:30am to 5:30pm                                                                                                                                                                    $195.00

Lewis Watts, photographer, curator and visual archivist will lead an all day workshop about developing photographic projects and bodies of work.  Watts will use demonstration, discussion, critique and reflection to respond to and facilitate the individual vision of each participant.

Held at the Launch for Hire in Inverness, CA                                                                                   (directions upon registration)
Limited to 12 participants- sign up today!

About the workshop:

I am interested in interacting with people of various levels of experience, who are passionate about photography and its function as a tool of exploration and expression. I have been thinking about and teaching photography for a long time. Dialoging about work and trying to discover intention, is always very useful in helping me to continue to consider my own ideas and ways of working, while this may seem selfish, it is a powerful tool for gaining perspective. The workshop will be a chance to share our photographs with each other and respond and articulate ideas together  as a way of clarifying a collective and personal vision. Prints work best, but we can also share digital files either by pad, laptop or projection.

We will spend most of the time looking at and talking about each other’s work but there may be some time to photograph in the surroundings if people wish but this will primarily be a portfolio review. Either way, the beautiful surroundings of Tomales Bay and Inverness will provide a ready source of inspiration.

About Lewis:

Lewis Watts has been a photographer, archivist and educator for over 40 years. He is an Emeritis Professor of Art at the University of California at Santa Cruz having retired last year.  He is the co-author with Elizabeth Pepin of the book “Harlem of the West, The San Francisco Fillmore Jazz Era”, Chronical Books 2006, which consists of found photographs and oral histories of an African American Community that sprang up as a result of the migration west during  WW II and that was urban renewed out of existence in the late 1960s.  He is also the co-author with Professor Eric Porter of New Orleans Suite: Music and Culture in Transition, UC Press 2013, which is a dialog of images and observations on New Oreans both before and after Hurricane Katrina.

His photography has been exhibited and in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Art, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art New Orleans, The Neuberger Museum of Art Purchase NY, Smithsonian Institution Washington D.C., The Oakland Museum of California, The Studio Museum in Harlem,the American Embassies in Moscow and Progue and the Cité de La Musique, Paris among other places.

His work is an examination of the “Cultural Landscape” of the African Diaspora in  Harlem, West Oakland, New Orleans, Cuba, France and other parts of the world. His interests are in the traces of history, cultural expression, spiritual belief and contemporary experience found in these environment as well as those who leave the traces. 

MORE RESOURCES ABOUT LEWIS WATTS:

Harlem of the West Project

New Orleans Suite

Cuba exhibition via You Tube

Lightworks Project