Writing About Your Photography: Artist Statements & More - Fall 2026

This is an intensive, hands-on workshop for photographers who encounter resistance or overwhelm related to the necessary process of writing about their work.

Over the course of this two-session workshop, participants will:

• Gain clarity about a specific photographic project, and/or their overall creative practice
• Use practical tools and processes for identifying core ideas and meaning within said project
• Translate those ideas from visual to written language, as necessary

During the first session, participants will present a photographic project and the first draft of an artist or project statement. A short-form lecture will introduce the most common written documents for visual art, and will articulate each’s purpose, strengths and weaknesses.

We will spend the rest of the afternoon engaging in exercises intended to identify and break down the “facts” of each project into manageable pieces. Together, using specific tools, we will articulate, edit, and rearrange these pieces into written forms, such as a project statement, artist statement, and artist bio.

Participants will then be invited to re-work their final drafts, which they can present for feedback during the second session. The workshop will conclude with a roundtable discussion and Q&A about how to create an effective writing practice in tandem with their existing visual art practice.

Participants are encouraged to write using their own authentic voice, engaging language they are familiar with, in order to effectively speak and write about their work. Participants are invited to ignore (shun, even!) empty art jargon, which so often intimidates and inhibits each artist’s unique expression.

Participants are asked to prepare the following prior to the first session of the workshop:

• 10-15 rough prints, sized 4x6 or 5x7, representative of a single project or multiple projects (whichever you want to write about)
• Rough draft of your artist/project statement

Images © Rachel Demy