Amy Flatow

In 2008, Amy Flatow began teaching photography in New York City public schools through the NYC Department of Education. Over the course of her tenure, she has built photography programs that bridge darkroom and digital practices, currently at The Beacon School in Manhattan and previously M.S. 51 in Brooklyn. The focus of these photography programs is to ground students in both the history and evolving possibilities of the photographic medium.

Young adults are in a transitional stage which can be both uncomfortable and ripe with discovery. Welcoming this transitional moment, Amy Flatow encourages her students to explore their own interests and identities through photography, using both analog and digital tools to support creative risk-taking and personal expression.

The hashtag #FilmIsNotDead has emerged in recent years as a rallying cry against the over-digitalization of photography. The classroom is the perfect place to reintroduce analog elements of the medium. Students often arrive in the classroom having taken hundreds of images on their phones each week, often without a clear understanding of foundational photography. Analog processes initially seem antiquated, but they offer a hands-on entry point to the medium, helping students slow down to observe as photographers, and intentionally engage with the images they create.

Amy Flatow has curated and presented student work in numerous exhibitions with partner organizations such as Arts Connection and Photoville across New York City. Her students have exhibited in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s PSArt program, Museum of Modern Art’s Imagined Futures exhibition, Grand Central Station’s Dear New York exhibition in conjunction with Brandon Stanton, as well as the George Masa Foundation, the Brooklyn Borough Arts Festival, and the Manhattan Borough Arts Festival. They have also earned over 100 citywide Scholastic Art Awards and national medals.

Amy Flatow currently teaches photography at The Beacon School in Manhattan, where she leads a full-time darkroom and digital program, incorporating alternative photographic processes. Her courses emphasize technical fluency and conceptual development while encouraging students to think critically while keeping historical, cultural, and political contexts of image-making in mind.

When she isn’t teaching, Amy Flatow is photographing with her large-format film camera or hiking with her husband Max (a professional food photographer & NYC public school graduate) along with their two sons.

Amy Flatow holds a BA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MAT from Tufts University in conjunction with the School of the Museum of Fine Arts.