with Preston Gannaway
The people who are in our pictures give us so much and it's really important that that is a two-way street.
Approaching an assignment documenting a family dealing terminal illness Preston Gannaway made the choice to step out of invisibility and become a part of the experience. That choice has defined her work. For nearly 20 years, Preston has focused on intimate stories about American families and marginalized communities while addressing themes such as gender identity, class and our relationship to the landscape.
In class Preston will review her approach to joining in an experience, with families, communities and street scenes. She shares how developing a relationship can take years or seconds. There are ways to communicate your involvement, through body language, expression, interest. Bring your ideas for your own intimate photo projects. How might you approach documenting lives effected by a change in situation (place, health, new life)? Where do you find respect, integrity and even joy in a difficult situation?
You will learn to enter into the lives you document and photograph the experience
Hands on work will include mapping the approach to
Bring your notebook, camera and open heart.
Optional (and beneficial) bring
- intimate moment photographs that you like (yours or others)
- challenges that you have had with capturing intimate moments (photos that didn't work to your satisfaction).
- thoughts about a project you might have in mind - and challenges you might face with it.
About Preston Gannaway
www.prestongannaway.com
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Preston Gannaway is a Pulitzer Prize-winning documentary photographer and artist. For nearly 20 years, she has focused on intimate stories about American families and marginalized communities while addressing themes such as gender identity, class and our relationship to the landscape. Born and raised in North Carolina, she now lives in Oakland, California.
Gannaway is best known for her long-term projects like Remember Me, which chronicles a family coping with a parent’s terminal illness and was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. Her work has also been honored by Pictures of the Year International, Critical Mass and American Photography. She’s been supported by grants from the Getty Images and Chris Hondros Fund Award, The Documentary Project Fund, National Press Photographers Association and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. In 2018 she was invited to be a Light Work Artist in Residence.
Her photographs have been shown in solo and group exhibitions in venues around the world including the Griffin Museum of Photography, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Georgia and San Francisco International Airport Museum.
Editorial clients include New York Times Magazine, California Sunday Magazine, Mother Jones, ESPN, and WIRED among others. Her first monograph, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, about the changing character of a seaside neighborhood along the Chesapeake Bay, was released in 2014. She is currently a visiting professor at the University of Montana.