Saturday, 10am – 12:30pm (Hawai’i time), March 5 – April 2. Final class meeting, Sunday, April 24, 10am-12:30pm.
TAUGHT ONLINE
Fee: $225
Instructor: Lydia Panas

This workshop is designed for photographers of all levels interested in exploring what makes a strong, intimate, and engaging portrait. We will discuss the relationship between artist and subject, establishing trust, and our impact on the encounter, to better appreciate how to make portraits that are engaging and powerful. Through a combination of slide presentations, critiques, and assignments we will consider framing, environment, light, location, body language, and expression.

We will look closely at the work of well-known portrait photographers exploring backgrounds and motivations to understand differences in style, method, and intent, and how their work is unique. We will discuss issues of representation and power dynamics in the work to better articulate our own voice and make portraits that are both personal and universal.

Lydia is interested in what lies below the surface, investigating questions about who we are and what we want to become.  All her work is made in the fields, the forests, and the studio of her seventy-acre farm in Pennsylvania. The connection she feels to this land and her family is the foundation of her work.

Class takes place on Zoom software. Registered participants will be sent Zoom link and instructions for submitting images through Dropbox or Google Drive prior to the first class.

Lydia Panas is a visual artist working in photography and video. Drawing on a combination of psychoanalysis and feminism, her work looks at identity and what lies below the surface, investigating questions of who we are and what we want to become. Exploring the roles of power and trust on both sides of the camera, she describes what it feels like to be a woman, a human, and the complex range of emotions we feel. Panas’ work has been exhibited widely in the U.S. and internationally. Her photographs are represented in public and private collections including the Brooklyn Museum, Bronx Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Palm Springs Art Museum, Allentown Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago, Museum of Photographic Arts San Diego, Zendai Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai, and the Sheldon Museum, among others. She has three monographs, “The Mark of Abel (Kehrer Verlag 2012), “Falling from Grace” (Conveyor Arts 2016) and “Sleeping Beauty” (MW Editions 2021). She divides her time between Kutztown, Pennsylvania and New York City. For more information, visit: www.lydiapanas.com.