3 1/2 DAY WORKSHOP
Barbara Davidson photographs (c) Barbara Davidson 2023, Los Angeles Times 2023 / Dallas Morning News, 2023
Orientation Monday, October 9th, 4:30pm – 5:30pm
Tuesday, October 10th – Thursday, October 12th 9:00am – 4:00pm.
Thursday, October 20th 9:00am – 11:00am Pacific Standard Time VIA ZOOM
It has been said many times that Barbara Davidson is amongst the most engaged photographers on the documentary photography scene. Her work has literally spoken to the world over her decades-long career.
Working with Barbara Davidson is having the opportunity to work with one of the finest and most powerful documentary photographers working in the world today. She has been called the Documentary Photography Artist because of a remarkable personal approach to her work.
Producing valuable documentary photography allows photographers to bring what they\’re seeing and witnessing to the world. The way to move the dial on important issues is powerful photography. Pulitzer prize and Emmy- winning photographer Barbara Davidson will immerse attendees in the means and methods that have brought her recognition throughout the world. This workshop is your opportunity to spend three + days with Barbara to gain unique insights into the mind and methods of this important documentary photographer. Attendees will benefit from seeing and hearing Barbara discuss her work and the trajectory of her career.
Barbara has designed the class for photographers wanting to experience getting in the trenches and produce singular documentary photography essays. Important focus will be on shaping and editing work. Editing determines what documentary photographers shoot; shooting and editing will be equally weighted.
Attendees will have two choices, based on their vision for what they\’d like to take away from the class:
Attendees can go out as a group, in groups and / or individually to execute projects with Barbara\’s oversight and input each morning and afternoon. This allows attendees to focus on a project, make work and have important near-immediate feedback before continuing to shoot for the essay.
Those more advanced who are already working on a project can choose to work with Barbara on shaping, sequencing, editing and giving their projects direction each day.
In both scenarios there will be class discussions and critiques several times during the course of the class.
Principal photography will take place on Days 2 and 3 of the course under Barbara\’s guidance. The final day the class will have edited their work and presented a finished project for review.
Price: $2240
plus $55 per day (Monday not included) Daily Registration (included: Model fees, workshop transportation, opening reception, networking dinner, evening presentation and party.
Photographers should bring their laptops and be conversant with their hardware and software in order to facilitate downloading and projecting their work for critiques in class. Digital projectors with standard DVI / VGA cables will be provided. If you require any special adapter for your computer for this purpose, please be sure to bring one to class.
BIOGRAPHY
Barbara Davidson is a three-time Pulitzer Prize and Emmy award winning photojournalist / documentary photographer best known for her work on victims of gang violence in Los Angeles and oppressed peoples throughout the world.
A staff photographer at the Los Angeles Times until 2017, Barbara spent much of the past decade photographing women and children trapped in a culture of poverty and guns.
Barbara won global recognition for her 2011 project, Caught in the Crossfire, an intimate story of innocent victims trapped in Los Angeles’ deadly gang wars. One of her subjects, Rose Smith, was three-months pregnant when she was hit by stray bullets on her way home from the market. One bullet just missed her unborn daughter — Miracle — who survived. Rose remains paralyzed.
Barbara was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for the project. She also produced and directed a 30-minute documentary, Caught in the Crossfire: Victims of Gang Violence, which received the 2011 Emmy Award for New Approaches to News and Documentary Programming.
In her decade at the Los Angeles Times, she also covered the San Bernardino terrorist attack which earned a Staff Pulitzer Prize, in 2016, for Spot News. In 2014, she was awarded Pictures of The Year International’s award for Newspaper Photographer of the Year, for the second time, in part for her project on solitary confinement at Corcoran’s men’s prison in California.
Barbara mastered her story-telling approach through multiple assignments over two decades and across 52 countries covering war, humanitarian crises and the human condition for the Los Angeles Times, the Dallas Morning News and the Washington Times. She has covered both breaking world events and underreported stories, turning a compassionate eye towards individuals striving for dignity and normalcy.
Early in her career, Barbara traveled with the Red Cross to cover the end of the Bosnian War. Her work since then has taken her to the Second Intifada in Israel as well as wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. She has also covered natural disasters, including Hurricane Katrina as a member of a team that won a Pulitzer in Spot News Photography in 2006 for the Dallas Morning News, and more recently covering Hurricane Harvey for the New York Times.
Since leaving the L.A. Times, Barbara has served as lead creative and director of Volvo’s SC60 Moments, an innovative campaign which used the car’s safety camera system to create a photo exhibition. Photographs from the shoot were curated in an exhibition which premiered in London. The accompanying “making of” film has attracted more than 1.5 million views.
Barbara is currently working on a photography book about Los Angeles gang violence, and is planning to document consequences of gun violence in other cities in the United States.
WEBSITE
3-DAY WORKSHOPS + 2-HOUR WRAP
