"Take Sean Kernan's class: if you are open to it you will be enriched. It's really not about photography. It's about receptiveness, understanding, expansion and challenge.
Take Sean Kernan's class if you are not open to it and you will be shaken up, irritated, annoyed and challenged. In either case it will be time well spent and changes in you will be made. After all isn't that what we're going for?"
Jay Maisel
For years I have been teaching a workshop for photographers that began as class about taking better photographs—more expressive, more honest and direct, clearer. Trying to figure that out for my
first class, I came to the thought that the best way to do this was to work with what happens before the photograph is taken.
To tell the truth, having blithely accepted the job, I was a little desperate, but the idea worked. And the more I experimented and found ways to get photographers to that creative state, the more I began to see that the creative process functions identically to the process by which people learn, from infancy on. It was a lot bigger than taking "better pictures."
It has all led to an kind of unusual class that begins with photography, goes beyond it, and return in the end. And I arrived at it because I was not trained as a teacher (or even as a photographer), for which I am now grateful.
It seemed to me, then and now, that to take a photograph you needed to be fully present, awake and alert enough to perceive absolutely everything that is around you—including things that can’t be seen, like sounds, atmosphere, social interactions. It is a state of full awareness, and from that place one can make photographs that engage senses other than the visual, as well as the intellect…as most of the great photographs do.
The class uses a number of exercises to take people to a greater presence and awareness at will, not by accident. It does so by temporarily setting aside photo-making concerns in order to look around with as many sensesas fully as possible. The exercises themselves are quite simple and rely on doing things that we all know how to do already, such as walking across a room. But instead of just shambling from one side to the other, we focus on being aware of each step, each thought.
At the end of the exercises the class returns to picture making, but the photographs tend to be broader, deeper, more resonant, because the photographer is more alert. This tends to manifest during the months and years after the class ends
There was an important node in all this when I taught a class to the faculty at the Maine Media Workshops in the Summer of 08. Communication Arts ran an article about it in January, and you can read it here. Also, I recorded the opening talk of that class, and you can hear it here.
Somewhat unexpectedly, all this has led to a number of invitations to lecture on the subject of creativity and education (listed below), and to a series of articles, mostly published in Communication Arts, which you can browse through here.
In class, photo: Jay Maisel
Schedule of upcoming classes and talks includes:
Yale Medical School Lecture Dec. 2
ASMP Strictly Business 3, Los Angeles, January 21-23, 2011
ASMP Strictly Business 3, Philadelphia, February 25-27, 2011
ASMP Strictly Business 3, Philadelphia, April 1-3, 2011
(Link for all.)
Santa Fe Workshop, Creativity and the Photographer, March 13-19 2011
Becoming the Source of Your Own Art, North Country Studio Workshops, Bennington VT, January, 2012
This workshop is an exploration, through direct experience, of the creativity that happens before we start making anything. It is an on-your-feet workshop for artists in any medium, using theater improvisation, music, movement, brushwork, observational note-taking, etc. The point is not to do these things well, but to be in the expansive experience that surprise and unfamiliarity bring to us, and to get us to trust processes that we can’t see or describe.
In addition to short assignments, we will work on an out-of-the-box project during the week.
Think of it as Arts Summer Camp, but in Winter.
To date I have taught and lectured at:
New School/Parsons (New York),
Art Center (Pasadena),
Hallmark Institute of Photography
General Mills
International Center of Photography (New York),
Maine and Santa Fe Workshops,
University of Texas,
Austin Peay University (Tenn.),
F. Holland Day Foundation (Maine),
Wesleyan University,
Institute of Art (Atlanta)
Lehman College (New York)
In addition to teaching workshops I have been a keynote speaker at various events, including Art Center, Pasadena, graduation; Rockport College, Maine, graduation; Society of Photographic Education, New England; Case Editors Conference, Chicago; Governor's Academy, Massachussets; Williston Academy, Massachussets; the Townhouse Gallery, Cairo; ASMP Strictly Business, Los Angeles and Atlanta; Photo-Plus, New York.