"Collaborative Portraits"

We talk about “taking” or “shooting” a photograph—language that reflects the photographer’s power to control the narrative and the potential for abuse or mischaracterization inherent in the exercise of that control.
 

What does it look like to make a photograph that shares story telling between photographer and subject? How is a shared photographic story a fundamentally different story serving different goals?

As a photographer, Fran Sherman uses environmental portraits and documentary photography to explore the lives of women and girls and the experience of family and community, incorporating collaborative methods into her photographic practice. While every portrait is a collaboration between subject and photographer, “Collaborative
Portraits” are intentionally co-created.

The young women and Fran make environmental portraits, collaboratively set and staged, but ultimately telling the story as Fran sees it. The photographic portrait then becomes a canvas re-interpreted and altered by the young woman, through painting and collage, to express her vision and self-view. Each young woman then writes her I Am Why statement, which is digitally added to the collaborative portrait.
 

These collaborative portraits and the conversations they inspired have been published in the art and social justice book, I Am Why Reclaiming the Lens. The public is welcome to attend the opening reception for this art show.

Refreshments will be served.
 

Contact: frantsherman@gmail.com