Hi fam,
You’ve heard me talk about narrative ad nauseam. I do believe that storytelling is at the heart of pretty much everything in our lives. It’s how we remember things as humans. So it matters.
Narrative…
Linear, the Western default most photographers inherit without ever choosing it. Circular, the story that returns to where it began but transformed, a structure that lives in African oral traditions and in how grief and inheritance actually move through time. Fragmented, the story that refuses to stay in order, that jumps the way memory and diaspora and trauma actually work in the body. Layered, the palimpsest, multiple truths pressing against each other in the same frame without resolving. And poetic, images that don't explain themselves but create an atmosphere you feel before you can name it.
One of these has been pulling at you this week, I hope 😉
Maybe you read the circular and something clicked about the project you have been working on for three years and keep calling unfinished. Maybe the fragmented one finally explained why your best work is so hard to pitch, not because it's weak but because you've been forcing it into the wrong container. Maybe the layered one put language to something about your identity as a photographer that you've been circling without quite landing on.
That recognition, right there, is what clarity feels like.
And clarity is what changes everything. How you sequence. How you describe your work to an editor in two sentences and they actually feel it. Which grants you apply for and how you frame the application so that committees feel the necessity of your project rather than just the competence of your execution. Which clients find you irreplaceable because your vision is specific and declared and unmistakably yours.
Clarity = Self-Knowledge multiplied by Storytelling.
That is the formula. It sounds elegant. It takes real work to build, the kind of work that goes underneath the technical skill you already have, down into who you are as a storyteller and what you are actually trying to say and why now.
That is what twelve weeks together builds.
You leave with one finished personal project, structured around the right narrative form, sequenced with intention, ready to pitch. An artist statement that finally sounds like you. A grant strategy with templates and a database of over 200 funding opportunities. A community of twelve photographers who understand the kind of work you are making. And a methodology you will use for every project after this one.
Enrollment closes today. Cohort starts tomorrow, March 27.
See you on the other side.
Lola