CCNY EDUCATION | Spring & Summer 2013 Classes and Workshops

Instructor: T. Cole Rachel

Tuesdays 7 - 10pm | May 28 - June 25 (5 sessions)
Cost: $300. ($270 CCNY members)
This class is limited to 10 students.

Photography and poetry have one important thing in common—the focus on specific images, images that aren’t necessarily tied to a plot (as in fiction and film). What makes both poems and photographs good is a strongly felt point of view. This course, taught by poet and feature writer/critic T. Cole Rachel, will encourage the writing of poems while using photographers’ existing images as a source to unlock potential subject matter and discuss point of view. Each student will write at least three poems during the 5-week class, and they will be read and analyzed in class. For photographers who have had the impulse to write poems and didn’t know how to get started, or who have written in the past but have lost touch with the art form, the class will be a stimulation to write, and to engage with some important voices in contemporary poetry. The class will read the work of certain contemporary poets, including Louise Gluck, Mary Oliver, and Albert Goldbarth.

T. Cole Rachel is a freelancer writer based in Brooklyn. His work has appeared in Interview, V, OUT, Numero, Purple, and The New York Times Magazine. His books include Surviving the Moment of Impact and Bend, Don’t Shatter. He is also a part-time bartender and collector of ceramic cats. His website is www.tcolerachel.com.

Seen to Scene
Instructors: Allen Frame & Joshua Sanchez

Thursdays 7 - 10pm | May 30 - June 27 (5 sessions)
Cost: $300. ($270 CCNY members)
This class is limited to 10 students.

This 5-session course will explore how to use still photography as a tool for writing screenplays and making narrative films. Still photographs often have implicit narratives; this course will help unlock those narratives and free the photographer’s latent talent for storytelling. The class will start with the images a photographer has taken, or has in mind, and analyze their components of character and setting to discover the narrative and start creating dialogue and scenes. Recent still photography, films, and plays will be studied as a springboard to exercises in writing. By utilizing filmmaker “lookbooks” and analyzing these filmmakers’ final short films, the class will explore the medium of still photography as a point of departure for narrative filmmaking in the short and feature length formats. The class will also consider how certain influential contemporary filmmakers use a sense of documentary photographic reality to develop narratives from character predicament, using filmmakers Cristi Puiu (The Death of Mr. Lazarescu), Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (Rosetta), and Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone) as examples. The final assignment will be the completion of a short narrative video script.

Reared in Houston, Texas, Joshua Sanchez graduated from Columbia University’s MFA Film Program. FOUR, his debut feature film, won the ‘Best Performance in the Narrative Competition’ Award at the 2012 Los Angeles Film Festival and the ‘Best Narrative Feature’ Award at the 2012 Urbanworld Film Festival. It has screened at festivals in San Francisco, London, New Orleans, London, Istanbul, Rio de Janeiro, and Guadalajara, and its star Wendell Pierce was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead. Four will be released across the U.S. this summer. Four was awarded the Jerome Foundation’s Film and Video grant, and Sanchez won the HBO Films Young Producer’s Development Award in 2003. His short films have screened at festivals internationally. More information is at www.joshuasanchez.net and www.fourthemovie.com.

Allen Frame is represented by Gitterman Gallery in New York; his book Detour, a compilation of his photographs over a decade, was published by Kehrer Verlag Heidelberg in 2001. Frame has been the recipient of grants from the Penny McCall Foundation, the Peter Reed Foundation, Creative Time, Art Matters, CECArtslink and others, and he has been the curator of exhibitions at Delta Axis (Memphis), Art in General, PS122 Gallery, and the Camera Club of New York. He currently serves as the President of the Board of the Camera Club of New York, and he is an Executive Producer of Joshua Sanchez’s feature film Four. His own short film, Going Home, has been presented in Mexico City and Tijuana. He graduated from Harvard University. More information is at www.allenframe.net.

Silver and Dye: Personal Cinema and DIY Processing
Instructor: Kenneth Zoran Curwood

First 3 sessions: Mondays, June 3, June 10, & June 17 from 7-9pm. Final session: Sunday, June 23, noon-5pm (4 sessions)
Cost: $250 ($225 CCNY members) Materials Fee: $50.00
This class is limited to 10 students.

As film enters into its final days, we will honor that fact by reveling in the rich history, beauty and magic inherent in the medium itself. Often associated with large studios, labs, and production companies, filmmaking at its heart was only for the most ambitious artist. By necessity, its early practitioners were forced to simultaneously play engineer, scientist, and director; with labs often built into their own basements. As time went on, specialization and the film industry as we have come to know it emerged, but outside of that, all the while the amateur filmmaker has worked on, continuing to assume all the roles needed to realize his own vision.

This is a hands-on class that will both look into the makers of DIY filmmaking, and go in-depth into the steps needed to hand-process your own film. This class is 4 sessions (3 two hour classes and one 5 hour processing workshop) with screenings, discussions, guest presenters, and film making lab time included.

Kenneth Zoran Curwood is an artist and filmmaker from New York. As part of his practice, he takes apart old movie cameras and projectors, and re-purposes them to photograph movies one frame at a time (DIY optical printing). He then processes the film in home-made chemical mixtures. Curwood’s works have been shown at Anthology Film Archives, Canada Gallery, Union Docs, Louis V E.S.P., Heliopolis Gallery, and many other venues. He graduated with a BA in sculpture from the School of the Visual Arts. To see his work, go to his vimeo site.

Mastering your Digital SLR Camera
Instructor: Saul Robbins

Sundays Noon - 4pm | June 9 & June 16 (2 sessions)
Cost: $200 ($180 CCNY members)

Learn to use your advanced DSLR (Digital Single-Lens Reflex) camera to its fullest potential. Topics covered include: manual and automatic settings, aperture and shutter speeds, using digital and film cameras, framing and composition, digital file storage and organization, and a brief overview of digital post-production options (how to efficiently store, print, and broadcast your images on the web). There will be a neighborhood field trip during the first class.

Saul Robbins is interested in the ways people interact within their surroundings, and the psychological dynamics of intimacy. His photographs are motivated by personal experience, especially those related to loss and the desire for unification. He is best known for the series Initial Intake, which examines the empty chairs of Manhattan-based psychotherapy professionals from their clients’ perspective. Most recently, Robbins created How Can I Help? – An Artful Dialogue, in which he invited passersby to speak with himself or other artists about anything they wish for free and in complete confidence, in a pop-up office / exhibition environment in Midtown Manhattan. Exhibitions include The Bolinas Museum, Blue Sky Gallery, chashama, Deutsche Haus at NYU, Griffin Museum, Massachusetts General Hospital, MICA, Museum of Fine Arts – Houston, New Orleans Photo Alliance, Ost Gallery, Moscow, Portland Art Museum, The Philoctetes Center, Rayko, and others. Publications include Aufbau, Berlin Tagesspiegel, CPW Quarterly, D – La Repubblica, Feature Shoot, FlavorWire, Glo.com, More, The New York Times, Real Simple, Wired, and others. Grants and awards include chashama Windows Award, The Covenant Foundation, Sony World Photography Awards (Finalist), AJPA Rockower, Gunk Foundation and New York Foundation for the Arts. Curatorial projects include Projecting Freedom: Cinematic Interpretations of the Haggadah (2010), Regarding Intimacy (2007), and No Live Girls, Peep Show 28 (2002). Robbins received his MFA from Hunter College (1999), and teaches at the International Center of Photography in New York City, and consults privately and Master Workshops in Europe on marketing and self-promotion for photographers. His work may be viewed at www.saulrobbins.com.

Advanced Teen Photography Intensive: Age 12 - 18
Instructor: Maureen Drennan

Mondays & Wednesdays 1:00 - 4:00pm | July 8 - July 31 (8 sessions)
Cost: $650. This class is limited to 6 students.

“Develop“ your photography and darkroom skills in this exciting course for young adults. Get an introduction to photographic history and expand your knowledge of composition, exposure, depth of field, and shutter speed. Refine your printing skills in the darkroom and learn advanced techniques such as split filter printing. The creative use of photographic techniques as they relate to individual expression will also be discussed. Create a personal photo project and benefit from class trips and critiques. Some prior darkroom experience preferred and a film camera with manual settings required.

Maureen Drennan is a professional photographer and educator born and based in New York City. Since receiving her MFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts in 2009, her photographs have been included in numerous group exhibitions including the Chelsea Art Museum, Silver Eye Center for Photography, Newspace Center for Photography, and The Wild Project. Maureen has received honors from Aperture, The Photo Review, PDN, The Photographic Resource Center of Boston, Humble Arts Foundation, Artist as Citizen, and the Camera Club of New York. Her photographs were included in The Collector’s Guide to New Art Photography, Volume 2 and were featured in The New York Times Lens Blog in 2011. Maureen currently teaches film and digital photography as well as the history of photography at the City University of New York. Visit her website at www.maureendrennan.net.

Look at this site for constant updates & information on CCNY classes, seminars, and workshops scheduled for later in 2013.

Please call or email if you have any questions.

Spring/Summer 2013 Registration:
by email at info@cameraclubny.org by phone at 212–260–9927

Full payment deposit needed to register for any class, lesson, or workshop. Deposit is fully refundable if cancellation occurs two weeks prior to first class session, 25% cancellation fee applicable if less than two weeks notice is given before the first class session.

CCNY accepts cash, checks, and all major credit cards. Class offerings and details subject to change.