Visual Storytelling
with Mary Beth Meehan
including a Portfolio Review session with
Mary Virginia Swanson
Fall, 2010

How does a photograph tell a story? How does it reflect the world we live in, our connections to each other, and the issues or concerns of our daily lives?

How does a photographer look deeply into this world, creating images that reflect on other lives, while reflecting something important about our own?

And finally, once these images are made, how do you market them and give them an audience in the public arena?

Mary Beth Meehan is an award-winning American photojournalist who has built her career on the belief that you don’t need to go to faraway places to create deep, meaningful images about our lives. In fact, she believes that for a democracy to function, we citizens need to be exposed to more in-depth, informed, subtle, and nuanced exploration of the world right on our doorsteps.

Mary Beth’s weekly photo-and-text column in the Providence Journal, entitled “Our Times” was one of the first such columns to gain national recognition, and resulted in her speaking all over the country on the importance of deep, local journalism. Inspired in part by this work, photo columns began cropping up in newspapers nationwide.

In this Sunglow workshop, students will have Mary Beth as a sounding board as they explore the rich human landscape of the American Southwest, looking for stories that stir and inspire them. Students will be challenged to reach beyond their own preconceptions and expectations, and really try to meet and understand people on their own terms.

Students will spend their days immersed in local communities, researching possible stories, meeting subjects, negotiating access, and photographing.

Evening lectures will cover the ethics of this work, the practical implications, and a photographer’s responsibility to his or her subject. We will cover basic reporting skills, as well as the process of gaining access to and understanding a person’s life, and using one’s instincts to guide you through this process.
We will also review the day’s work, allowing ample chance for conversation about these broader issues as they are being confronted in the field. We will identify what is working in the photographs and what isn’t, and what could be addressed in the days ahead. To aid in our learning, we will look at images by master visual storytellers from photography’s history, as well as contemporary narrative image-makers.

At the end of a week’s work, students will be treated to a morning with Mary Virginia Swanson, celebrated photography consultant who makes it her goal to help photographers find the strengths in their work, and identify appreciative audiences in today’s marketplace. Swanson has a diverse professional background, having coordinated educational, publication and exhibition programs for a wide range of institutions and businesses in the field, and is considered an expert in the area of marketing and licensing fine art. Swanson currently works individually with photographers as a marketing consultant and is a sought-after Portfolio Reviewer at events such as Review Santa Fe, FotoFest and PhotoLucida.

On your final Saturday at Sunglow, Mary Virginia Swanson will do a group portfolio review of student work, and work with students toward an understanding of how to get their work seen by its audience.

Mary Beth's website is www.marybethmeehan.com.

Cost: Includes the workshop, 6 nights (shared) accommodation, three meals a day and gratuities: $2,475 plus tax (add $400 for single occupancy). Maximum: 8 participants.