Join Mimi Haddon and Aline Smithson for a workshop that celebrates play and imagination. Both instructors have a photographic legacy of considering the performative nature of photography by using costumes and props to create new realities.
Presenters: Mimi Haddon Aline Smithson
Location: Annenberg Space for Photography
Join Mimi Haddon and Aline Smithson for a workshop that celebrates play and imagination. Both instructors have a photographic legacy of considering the performative nature of photography by using costumes and props to create new realities. This workshop will feature dancers from the Heidi Duckler dance company.
This is a BYOC (bring-your-own-camera) workshop that will start with an introduction to the instructors and slide show of the artists’ work and inspirations. Participants will then head outside for a live, guided shooting session in and around Photoville and the Annenberg Space for Photography where photographers can create their own altered realities using dancers or other workshop participants as subjects.
Props, fabrics, costumes and masks will be provided, but photographers are encouraged to add their own. The workshop will further the collaborative process of creating characters and archetypes in architectural spaces. Simply put, we are going to experience the joy of play and imagination.
The workshop includes an optional wrap-up session and casual group critique where students may share their work and get ideas and feedback from the instructors and their workshop peers.
Mimi Haddon uses costume as a tool to explore the themes of archetypes and excess. Through her use of color, light and awkward body references, she infuses a sense of surrealism into her creature-like sculptures. She attributes her fascination with combining humor and post-apocalyptic themes to the many thousands of hours watching I Love Lucy and Twilight Zone reruns as a child.
Haddon’s clients include The New Yorker, Rodarte and Getty Images. In 2018 she graduated with an MFA in Fiber Art from CSULB where she expanded her knowledge of sculpture, textiles and costume. She is a frequent collaborator with Heidi Duckler Dance and is a professor of photography and design at FIDM.
Aline Smithson is a Los Angeles based artist best known for her conceptual portraiture and a practice that uses humor and pathos to explore ideas of childhood, aging, and the humanity that connects us. She has exhibited widely including over 40 solo shows at institutions such as the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Fort Collins Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Shanghai, Lishui, and Pingyao Festivals in China. In addition, her work is held in a number of public collections and her photographs have been featured in numerous publications including The New York Times, The New Yorker, PDN (cover), the PDN Photo Annual, Communication Arts Photo Annual, Eyemazing, and Silvershotz magazines.
Aline is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Lenscratch, a daily journal on photography. In 2012, Aline received the Rising Star Award through the Griffin Museum of Photography for her contributions to the photographic community. In 2014, Aline’s work was selected for the Critical Mass Top 50 and she received the Excellence in Teaching Award from CENTEЯ. In 2015, the Magenta Foundation published her first significant monograph, Self & Others: Portrait as Autobiography. In 2016, the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum commissioned Aline to do a series of portraits for the upcoming Faces of Our Planet Exhibition. Her work will be exhibited with the National Portrait Gallery in London as part of the Taylor Wessing Prize.
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