The Hot & Heat
New York, US 2006
The third New York workshop has produced some of the best students’ work to date. I want to pay homage to each photographer’s own abilities and their deep sensibility during the editing process, which I helped refine. New York city proved to be this very unique stage of daily life. The unbearable heat and the hot weather didn’t prevent the students to go out to search significant moments and even provided the tile for the group. Keith and Michelle chose the city at large as their source of inspiration; Sandy decided instead to concentrate his attention on a jazz club that soon will close down; Judith probed the eclectic Mexican community.
From the numerous photographic books of my collection, we selected some titles that we analyzed in-depth, pointing out good or bad editing, lay-outs, uninteresting images that would invariably lower the level of the book. Their understanding of the photographic process as a whole grew tremendously as of result of that.
The long editing sessions were alleviated by the wonderful Cuban-Sicilian cooking fusion of my wife Sissy that treated all of us to some delicious dishes.
My student/friend Beth continued the wonderful tradition of hosting the end-of-the-workshop party on her roof with the breath-taking view of the Manhattan skyline. Friends and older students attended the event curious to see the new work and to engage in amenable conversations. The whole New York workshops experience is becoming a good, old tradition that needs to be continued. See you next summer. EB
