Your Italy, Your Photographs, Your Story

Photograph by Workshop Student Alisdair
Photograph by Workshop Student Alisdair

“What’s your story? It’s all in the telling. Stories are compasses and architecture; we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and our prisons out of them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of a world that spreads in all directions like arctic tundra or sea ice. To love someone is to put yourself in their place, we say, which is to put yourself in their story, or figure out how to tell yourself their story.

Which means that a place is a story, and stories are geography, and empathy is first of all an act of imagination, a storyteller’s art, and then a way of traveling from here to there.” Rebecca Solnit

When I read the quote above by the writer Rebecca Solnit, I immediately thought about a primary goal I have for my Italy Photography Workshop students:

Story

Many people go to Italy and many of them make photographs of what they see there. My workshops take students to the next level, teaching them how to be storytellers with photographs. So, rather than returning with a random set of images, my students create a set of images that tell a story – their story – about what they see, feel and respond to, creating a personal response for their time in Italy. My goal for my students is to push them to go beyond picturesque, postcard images and help them tell their own stories about these amazing Italian places.

A few spaces remain for my June, 2016 Italy workshops and registration is closing soon; click below for more information:

Questions or more information? Call Jeff at 630.202.3635 or email jeff@jeffcurto.com