WHERE THE THREAD LEADS

workshop with Sylvia Plachy
june 23-24-25, 2018
WHERE THE THREAD LEADS
three-day ​workshop with Sylvia Plachy
june 23-24-25, 2018 (saturday-monday)
each day 10am-6pm​
max 8 students
​300 euros (plus 2018 membership)​
the workshop will be held in english
This class is for photographers who are already proficient and have a project that is well along to completion. The class is about finding yourself in the pictures you take. To not just hear what you intend to do, but to also look for what the pictures say about what interests and draws you and what shapes, connections, recurring themes occur that define your way of seeing and to help you continue.
We’ll begin this workshop with a long look at each participant’s project and we’ll work mostly as a group. The object of the class is to learn from your own work and from others.
You should bring a project, a set of photographs you would like to turn into a book or a photo essay. It could be a story, but also a visual mood poem, melody, or mystery with no end or beginning made in combination with other visual elements, maybe some writing as well.
To begin, we will look for meaning and themes that reside in each person’s photographs, unrealized threads that already exist and lead to visual connections and sometimes lead to new directions. We’ll talk about how a picture can express an idea, but even more, look for ideas that have their sources in images. Through editing and sequencing we’ll look for your inner vision and begin work on a book.
Please bring your computer and 30-50 small printed-out 5 x 7 inches work prints, to be able to move them around by hand and sequence the images. They don’t need to be on good paper, but bring one or two finished prints to show the shades of B&W or color you like. Once we have a sequence we could use the computer or a copying machine to set up the pages and decide how to best fit the photographs on the pages. To prepare, please look up the basics of InDesign. We’ll paste or clip the pages together as a book dummy.
To study and discuss their design and construction, bring a favorite book, perhaps one that has the size and shape and other qualities that inspire you. Also, have ideas for layout and typeface.  Think about a title and have on hand contact sheets or additional images on the computer in case some were overlooked.
Sylvia Plachy’s workshop “Where the thread leads” and Yolanda Cuomo’s workshop “I am a book” both revolve around the making of a Photobook, with different emphasis on different parts of the process. Sylvia will be concerned with editing, sequencing, choosing book and image size and ways of enhancing the original project, while Yolanda’s class will focus more on graphic refinements, image scale, typography and materials. Students from both classes will take home their own hand made accordion fold book dummy. On the second day of the workshop (sunday) the classes will join in a communal session / discussion.

Sylvia  Plachy  was  born  in  Budapest  during  World  War  II.  Fleeing  Hungary  with  her  parents  after  the  1956  Revolution,  she  has  been  living  in  New  York  for  most  of  her  adult  life.

An  award-winning  photographer,  her  photographs  are  in  many  private  collections  and  museums,  such  as  the  MoMA  in  New  York  City,  the  Minneapolis  Institute  of  Art,  the  San  Francisco  Museum  of  Modern  Art,  the  Houston  Museum  of  Fine  Arts,  the  High  Museum  of  Atlanta  and  the  Bibliotheque  nationale  de  France.

She  is  known  in  New  York  City  for  her  30  years  tenure  staff  photographer  for  the  Village  Voice.  Her  weekly  column,  UNGUIDED  TOUR  became  the  title  of  her  first  book,  which  won  ICP’s  Infinity  Award  in  1990.Her  other  awards  include  the  John  Simon  Guggenheim  Memorial  Fellowship,  a  CAPS  grant,  the  Dr.-Erich-Salomon-Preis  for  lifetime  achievement  in  photojournalism,  and  the  Lucie  Award.She  has  had  one-woman  shows  at  the  Whitney  Museum  at  Phillip  Morris,  the  Queens  Museum,  the  Boca  Raton  Museum  of  Art  and  the  Minneapolis  Institute  of  Art,  and  at  galleries  in  Berlin,  Paris,  Budapest,  Berlin,  Manchester,  Atlanta,  Ljubljana,  Tokyo,  Cluj-Napoca,  Charlottesville,  Los  Angeles  and  New  York  City.

She  has  had  features  and  photo  essays  published  in  magazines  and  newspapers  around  the  world  including  Vogue,  The  New  York  Times,  Metropolis  Magazine  and  The  New  Yorker.  Books:  Unguided  Tour,  Red  Light,  Out  of  the  Corner  of  My  Eye,  Goings  on  About  Town,  Signs  &  Relics  and  Self  Portrait  with  Cows  Going  Home. Sylvia  is  married  to  retired  history  teacher,  Elliot  Brody,  and  is  the  mother  of  actor,  Adrien  Brody.