New MA Photography and Collaboration at Coventry University

The MA Photography and Collaboration at Coventry University is a flexible residency course focused on collaborative photographic practice, created by Gemma-Rose Turnbull and Anthony Luvera.   Through an immersive blend of independent research, critical analysis, intensive practical delivery, and self-directed experiential learning, the MA Photography and Collaboration provides a unique opportunity… Continue reading

Shock and Awe: An interview with Ethan Rafal

I met Ethan when we were artist mentors together at Southern Exposure in 2015. Since then I have watched his practice grow into the world in a way that I find really exciting and that I really relate to. So I asked him if he would let us explore his practice a… Continue reading

Dru Donovan’s Positions Taken

  Dru Donovan’s interactive restagings of real situations are palpably challenging and painfully relevant, offering a cinematic entrance into human struggle. Using smart visual language, her photographs captivate our attention through imaginations of the all too real. – Jim Goldberg   Earlier this year Dru Donovan collaborated with a group… Continue reading

Participatory Playbook: an Exhibition at LOOK3

This is reposted from the Magnum Foundation tumblr. –––––– We’re excited to share the opening of Tactics of Collaboration: A Participatory Playbook, an exhibition of an ongoing collaboration with Photography, Expanded Fellow Mark Strandquist at the Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative in Charlottesville, Virginia. This exhibition was held in conjunction with the 2015 LOOK3 Festival of the… Continue reading

Is it possible to have a truly reciprocal partnership with a community?

    To ask this question is to acknowledge the power differential between an artist and the community they work with. It calls to my mind a number of considerations and related questions. Starting with: Where do the boundaries lie between a community practice and an artist using, or seducing,… Continue reading

Who is the artist here?

  Zoe Spawton is a 30 year old Australian working in a Berlin café. Ali Akdeniz is an 85 year old Turkish tailor, who also lives in Berlin. Since 2012, Zoe has been photographing Ali on his regular walks past her workplace and posting the portraits a blog called What Ali… Continue reading

PROVE IT TO ME

    PROVE IT TO ME, curated by Natasha Marie Llorens, is a group show featuring the work of Shane Aslan Selzer, Stephanie Diamond, Dillon de Give, Mark Menjivar, Maria D. Rapicavoli, Julia Sherman, and Mary Walling Blackburn. These seven artists, loosely defined as making social practice artwork, refuse an objective understanding of photography. Instead, they create projects that… Continue reading

Windows Without Prison Bars

 “If you could have a window in your cell, what place from your past would it look out to?”      Mark Strandquist’s work “Windows from Prison” is featured on The New York Times Lens blog today. The article written by Rena Silverman features accounts and stories from participants (both current and ex-prisoners).… Continue reading

Open Society Documentary Photography Grant Program

  The Open Society Documentary Photography Project is soliciting calls for the 2014 Audience Engagement Grant Program. Since the program’s inception in 2004, they have funded 54 photographers who have gone beyond documenting a human rights or social justice issue to enacting change. It would be a great grant for… Continue reading

Stephanie Diamond//Open Engagement

“I have always been a social practice artist, even when I didn’t have the term and called myself a photographer. When the term social practice became common, I felt a second sense of relief. I finally had a space to put myself…” – Stephanie Diamond

 
Stephanie Diamond is a New York City based social practice artist. Her work ensures that humans take care of themselves as individuals within a public. Her projects explore self-care, personal practice and individual awareness as a catalyst for being of service to communities. She runs Listings Project, her free weekly email of real estate and opportunities listings serving artists, creative communities and beyond.

You can read the rest of Stephanie’s account of transitioning from calling herself a photographer to being a social practice artist on the Open Engagement 100 Days/100 Questions blog project here.

A collaboratively written photo assignment

COLLAGE COLLAGE An Assignment by Eliza Gregory and Grace Leary Two-dimensional work changes its meaning and looks different when you install it on a wall. All of a sudden you are thinking about the physical context of the work, the way in which the work is presented, the framing and… Continue reading

Social Practice Projects That Pull Together Many Artists’ Work

I was just looking over an assignment for Jason Fulford and Gregory Halpern’s upcoming Photographer’s Playbook (which you can pre-order from Aperture or Amazon) and thinking about social practice projects that involve assigning a group of people a task, and then pulling all those assignments together into a book. Another… Continue reading