The Artist’s Statement SMACKDOWN

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This entertaining workshop is your opportunity to articulate your

power and intention in your personal approach to your photography,

and you will leave the day with a polished, written description of you and your work.

Saturday, March 15th, 2014

10 am til 4 pm

Midday Lunch is included

This workshop will be held in-Studio, Virginia-Highlands, Atlanta, GA. Directions and more details on what to bring will be sent to all registered participants.

We will start the workshop at 10am, with some very funny and slightly irreverent exercises to get you thinking, and create a base of material to draw from.

After lunch we will use a series of refining techniques, both written and verbal, and all participants will have one-on-one time with Keith and Robin, and will leave the workshop with a completed final draft, ready to use.

If you have not had the pleasure of meeting Keith Jolly, then you are in for a treat. Keith has so many talents and diverse background experiences that I won’t even begin here, but his amazing wit, insight, and ability to turn a phrase in a way that will make anyone sit up and listen, is just what he will be bringing to us, along with his unique series of writing techniques.

There is no right or wrong way to describe your photographic self, and the trick often lies in the simplest of methods. Even a short introductory phrase can glow with unexpected personality, or entice the reader in with a clever and wittily placed fact. There will be no clichés here and you will not find the word “Juxtaposition” anywhere! The techniques you learn here will become lifelong friends, and continuing to write about your work will also gently help your direction in photography to improve and grow, giving you a deeper understanding of yourself as you describe your intention to others. By articulating your desire and meaning in your work, you are empowering it, and by doing this you will gain clarity in your own mind. Your work will become more refined and directed, and new self assignments, themed bodies of work and ongoing series will appear.

I cannot tell you how valuable this discipline has been to me in my own work! For years, I always thought that just showing my images should be enough… that by looking at the print alone, my intention and purpose as a photographer was clearly all in there, somehow magically downloaded in a mind-meld to the viewer. I was so wrong! By not letting the viewer in on my thought process, personal history, and the technical in-camera work that I had suffered long and hard to create, a major misunderstanding and disconnect was taking place. As I began to write, even just scribbled notes on napkins and in margins, something much more real started to crystallize, connecting me to a new revelation of my work’s meaning, and ultimately to a tangible appreciation from my viewing audience.

Robin Davis

Keith Jolly Introduction:

I’m a scientist with a creative soul; a business development innovator with 35 years of taking the complex and making it succinct and actionable.

I’ve dealt with hyperinflation in Argentina, import controls in Venezuela, and learned the merengue in Puerto Rico. My Spanish is so bad people think I’m speaking Estonian. I’m an operatic tenor and a connoisseur of cheap South African wine.

I’ve sourced wool in Lesotho, destroyed chemical weapons in Russia, and never intentionally lost a friend.

But it’s not about me—I’m not trying to win any contests. It’s how to best project you and your ideas.

Two things you should know about me. I can teach you to project the essence of who you are—then convincingly have you write about it. Your story and your art; let’s get started.

For more information please contact Robin.