Reinventing the Family Album

Photography can be a powerful storytelling medium. In this hands-on workshop, participants will use their personal family photographs to construct their own narratives and, in so doing, learn about the process artists employ to create a body of work.

Techniques for editing, sequencing, and presenting digital or print media within the context of the family album will be discussed. Over the course of five weeks, participants will develop projects with their instructors, participate in interactive lectures, and have the special opportunity to study stored works from the SFMOMA collection.

Students will learn creative approaches to working with a collection of personal photographs and develop a language to think critically about photography.

Class Details

Bring to first class: One family photo to introduce yourself to the group.

No prior experience necessary.

Instructors

Janet Delaney

Stephen McLaren

Janet Delaney is a fine art photographer. She is currently documenting the rapid transformation of the SoMa district of San Francisco. As the mother of two, she has photographed her family extensively. Delaney has received three National Endowment for the Arts Grants. Her photographs have been collected by major museums and shown both nationally and internationally. In 2013 she published the monograph South of Market. Photographs from the book were exhibited in a one-person show at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, in 2015. Delaney taught at the University of California, Berkeley, for fifteen years and, in 2015, at the undergraduate and graduate programs at the San Francisco Art Institute.

Stephen McLaren has been a freelance photographer, writer, and curator since 2005. Before this he was a television producer and director working on documentaries in the UK. Over the last few years he has written several books on photography, the most recent being Family Photography Now, published by Thames and Hudson. McLaren writes about modern photographic practice for the British Journal of Photography and IMA Japan. He has taught photography classes at Tate Liverpool, The School of Life in London, and the Guardian newspaper.