Griffin Museum of Photography

Faculty at the Griffin Museum

Photobook Focus | The Role of a Photobook in your Career with Mary Virginia Swanson

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Virtual Event Virtual Event

July 12 @ 11:00 am – 1:00 pm

From hand-crafted, to print-on-demand, to a high-end monograph of your work, a printed piece showcasing your photographs can play an important role in moving your career forward.
In this richly illustrated lecture, Mary Virginia Swanson will help artists consider the most appropriate path to bring their work to book form and into the hands of their target audience.
Whether you are seeking a versatile promotional piece, dream of a catalogue to memorialize completion of a body of work, or strive to achieve a well-designed publication that amplifies the intention of the work, having clarity of both purpose and budget is essential. Swanson will address the question of choosing to self-publish vs being published to most effectively achieve your goals and walk us through the reality of each path to publication.
Finally, planning for an impactful launch will ensure you have the best chance to reach your audience, and your goals. A handout will be provided to participants after presentation.

Join us ONLINE in the Griffin Zoom Room on Saturday July 12th from 11 to 1pm Eastern Time / 8 – 10am Pacific Time for this in depth look at moving your photobook ideas forward.

This event will be recorded, and available to all participants for a limited time after the online presentation. Participants will be able to review the recording for 7 days following the event. All registered participants will be sent a link.

mary virginia swanson headshot
Mary Virginia Swanson, © Richard Klein

About our Presenter:
Mary Virginia Swanson brings extensive knowledge and deep connections across the photography industry, offering a wide range of insights into the creation, publication and marketing of lens-based projects. She is the co-author, alongside Darius Himes, of Publish Your Photography Book, now in its 3rd edition (Radius Books, 2023). A respected author, educator and advisor, Swanson’s teachings have guided countless photographers through the complex process of bringing their work to publication. 
Websites: www.mvswanson.com and www.publishyourphotographybook.com
Instagram: @ maryvirginiaswanson and @publishyourphotographybook

$35.00 – $45.00

The Griffin Museum of Photography

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Griffin State of Mind | Dana Smith

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dna smith headshotWe are continuing our Griffin State of Mind series by introducing you to one of our newest instructors, Dana Smith. Dana will be teaching a workshop at the museum called Mastering Flash: An On-Location, Low-Frills Approach this summer. We hope you will join us in welcoming Dana to the Griffin community.

Tell us how you first connected to the Griffin Museum.

It’s impossible to be a member of the Boston photo community and not know about the Griffin. I’ve been a photography teacher for 20 years and the Griffin Museum has never ceased to be an invaluable resource for anyone learning, teaching, or loving photography.

How do you involve photography in your everyday life? Can you tell us about any images or artists that have caught your attention recently?

wing shy

@Wing Shya

Fortunately it’s not something I ever have to try to do—it’s involuntary. From the minute I wake up to the moment I fall asleep my brain is thinking about pictures I’ve made, am hoping to make, or saw someone else make that I wish I had made or will eventually become capable of making. I never tire of the process and have yet to live a day where I didn’t want to create an image. As for artists that have inspired me lately, Wing Shya (Hong Kong) is someone that I’m constantly in awe of and whose work is a never-ending treasure trove of cinematic pageantry. While he’s hardly new his work never gets old.

Can you tell us about the new class you will be teaching at the Griffin this summer?

smith architectureMy ‘low-frills’ flash class was designed to take the lighting panic out of on-location photography. Portable flash is a powerful tool but every minute spent futzing with equipment is a minute that could be spent engaging with your subject. The ability to combine strobe with natural/available light opens up so many visual possibilities and allows the photographer to utilize light to custom build their narrative and covey a meaningful story about their subject. As someone who makes a living as an editorial/magazine portrait photographer, nothing ever goes as planned and time is always of the essence. In this workshop we will learn to be resourceful (on the cheap) and work fluidly to create portraits that are beautiful, complex, and emotionally rich.

 

Has there been a Griffin Museum exhibition that has particularly engaged or moved you?

vernacular imageYears ago there was an exhibition that I can’t recall the name of but it featured the history of the ‘snapshot’ and vernacular photography. As someone who has built his career photographing people, I’ve realized that the soul of nearly every successful portrait is usually connected to something or someone that the viewer has known or seen in their own family photo albums. 

 

What is your favorite place to escape to?

I love Istanbul but the history, colors, and textures can be visually overwhelming so I can’t really call it an escape. I suppose I like to get lost on any left-behind Mainstreet, USA.

What is a book, song or visual obsession you have at the moment?

At the moment I can’t stop listening to an in-store reel-to-reel tape played within K-Mart stores in 1973. Yup, it’s exactly the kind of twisted time warp you’d imagine

springsteen

 

 

If you could be in a room with anyone to have a conversation, who would it be and what would you talk about?

I’m obsessed with the art of storytelling and have been a Springsteen fan for as long as I can remember so I’d have to go with Bruce, but if he’s unavailable I’ll happily sit with Martin Scorsese.

 

 

About Dana Smith – 

Dana Smith has been a widely published photojournalist and editorial photographer for the past twenty-five years. He has worked with many top editors & art directors in the industry and has photographed for publications such as Time, Newsweek, New York Times Magazine, Forbes, Fortune, and Yankee. His photo-illustrations have been recently in the Washington Post and the Boston Globe.

To see more of Dana Smith‘s work visit his website. He is on Instagram @danasmith17

Griffin State of Mind | Donna Garcia

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We are delighted to have artist and educator Donna Garcia join our team at the Griffin as a curator and instructor. Donna will be a part of our upcoming show Spirit: Focus on Indigenous Art, Artists and Issues, and she will be teaching a one-day workshop, Marketing for Emerging Artists on Saturday, April 24th, along with her Self Portraiture class, taking place this fall. To see what gets her in the Griffin State of Mind, we asked her a couple of questions. 

Donna Garcia with camera

© Donna Garcia

Describe how you first connected with the Griffin.

Paula Tognarelli was a juror for a show that I had been selected for in New York City, and she really made me want to learn more about the Griffin.

Can you tell us about the workshop and the new classes you will be teaching at the Griffin?

I am excited to be able to share my experience in marketing and as an emerging lens-based artist, who has had to navigate ways to market my own work, in a one-day workshop, Marketing for Emerging Artists. However, Self-Portraiture is my passion. It is not just a contemplation of self, but it is a way we allows others to see us, reflects how we see the world and our place in it. Particularly during this past year, as we have all experienced an alienation of self in many ways.

We are so excited to have you join us as a curator for the Spirit: Focus on Indigenous Art, Artists and Issues. Can you tell us a little bit about the show and how a sense of spirit will influence the exhibition?

images from Spirit: Focus on Indigenous Art, Artists, and Issues

Spirit: Focus on Indigenous Art, Artists and Issues

Spirit is an initiative designed to educate the public, through lens-based art, regarding the true history of Indigenous people and recruit advocates for Indigenous issues everywhere, but with a specific focus on the US and Canada, where native lands and people аre still coming under attack. Collectively, this exhibition offers a partial glimpse, rather than a sweeping overview, of the many complex issues that Indigenous people navigate as part of their lived realities. It reflects, in part, the intricate nature of Indigenous identity. These ten artists have created images that reveal expressions of trauma, resiliency, resistance, healing, tradition, celebration and the undying spirit to preserve Indigenous culture even through the ravaging effects of centuries of colonization.

abstract woman in a dress with mirror, flowers, and tornado

© Donna Garcia – Air

As an adjunct professor you have said that mentoring students is very important. Can you tell us about why it is important to you to establish a time where students can come to you for support?

Teaching and learning the basic techniques of photography or filmmaking аre very straight forward, but learning to be an artist cannot be taught, it can only be learned. To help my students discover more about who they аre as artists and what they want to say, involves asking them the right questions, which only they can answer – that is how I view mentorship. That time of exploration where we find our own voice as artists usually happens before, after or in-between lectures.

How do you involve photography in your everyday life? How have your subjects changed during these unique times of distance and isolation?

woman surrounded by abstract lines

© Donna Garcia – Swarm

As an artist who does a great deal of self-portraiture, photography is a conduit between my self and the world outside. Photography is often a way that I visually define my role during a particular time. We all have three “roles” in time; the person we are in the present, the past and the future, so what happens when we only have the present? During the pandemic, time became elongated, stretched out, hence those “roles” stopped being linear and for me, the challenge became about dealing with a distancing or alienation of self just as much as being isolated from others.

Joan Didion - Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Joan Didion – Slouching Towards Bethlehem

 

What is one of your favorite exhibitions shown at the Griffin?

The Disappearance of Joseph Plummer, by Amani Willett. I absolutely love that work.

What is one book, song, or other visual obsession that you have at the moment?

I have read a lot of Joan Didion over the past year with Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album being two that I would read again. One of my favorite quotes from her is, “I have already lost touch with a couple of the people I used to be” – Joan Didion.

 

To learn more about Donna Garcia and view her work, visit her website, and check out her Instagram, @DonnaGarcia23. 

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