Internal Event

School of Art Dean’s Workshops Fall ’24, Artist as Storyteller: Perception, Perspective and the Narrative Image

October 16 – October 21, 2024 All Day

Various

The Dean of the School of Art, Jorge Oliver, is pleased to present this semester’s Dean’s Workshops with Ghanaian photographer Eric Gyamfi. Artist as Storyteller: Perception, Perspective and the Narrative Image is a four-day series taking place on Pratt’s Manhattan and Brooklyn campuses from Oct 16 – 21. Gyamfi will engage students in a range of activities, from foraging for plants on campus, to engaging in group storytelling practices as a way of building new personalized botanical archives. Gyamfi’s experimental approach to lens-based work invites students to revisit the fundamentals of photochemistry and optics and to query perception through cameraless photography. Gyamfi’s participatory workshops will foster an exchange of knowledge and nurture personal perspectives and connection amongst participants.

The School of Art and the Associate Degrees Department, in collaboration with the Photography Department, are thrilled to welcome Eric Gyamfi to our community this month. We hope you will join these workshops and engage with Eric’s unique creative perspective while he visits Pratt.

RSVP links below to join the activities and events for this series. Thank you and see you there!

The School of Art Dean’s Workshops with Eric Gyamfi, Oct 16 – Oct 21:

Wednesday Oct 16, 1:30 – 2:30 pm, Pratt Manhattan Campus, Room 201
Perception, Photography, Perspective. A site-specific photography workshop focusing on perception and the artists voice. RSVP here.
Thursday Oct 17, 10:30 am – noon, Brooklyn Campus, Film/Video Screening Room 102
Certain Winds from the South. Screening of Gyamfi’s recent experimental film, which is an adaptation of a short story by Prof. Ama Ata Aidoo. RSVP here.
Thursday Oct 17, 1:00 – 3:30 pm, Brooklyn Campus, Interfaith Commons Chapel
Building Botanical Archives through Storytelling. A participatory group foraging and story sharing exercise drawing on the culture of oral tradition in Ghana. RSVP here.
Monday Oct 21, 10:30 am – noon, Brooklyn Campus, ARC Building, F-03
Camera Obscura. Referencing the work of George Mahashe, this exercise is aimed towards establishing the basics of the optics that undergird traditional lens based photography. RSVP here.
Monday Oct 21, 1:00 – 5:00 pm, Brooklyn campus, ARC Building, Non-Silver Lab
Foraging for Photograms. A workshop to create cyanotype photograms using plants and objects found on campus, foster teamwork, creativity, and storytelling. RSVP here.

Eric Gyamfi (b. 1990, Ghana) is a photographer living and working in Ghana. Eric has a B.A in Information studies with Economics from the University of Ghana (2010 to 2014) and an MFA at the Department of painting and sculpture, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology(2018 – 2024 ). Gyamfi was also a fellow at the Photographers’ Master Class (Khartoum, Sudan 2016 and Nairobi, Kenya 2017, Johannesburg, South Africa 2018) and participated in the Nuku Studio Photography Workshops (2016) and World Press Photo West African Master Class (2017), both in Accra. His works have featured in A Diagnosis of time; Unlearn What You Have Learned Redclay Studios 2021), Ecologies and Politics of the Living (Vienna Biennale 2021), The 11th and 12th Bamako encounters (2017/2019), Fixing Shadows: Julius and I, (FOAM 2020, Autograph 2023), the 74th Berlinale International Film Festival(2024) and others. Gyamfi’s work examines the photographic medium, focusing on reprogramming its processes and materials to expand their functionality.

Questions? Contact School of Art Assistant to the Dean, Ciara Stack, cstack30@pratt.edu

This event is part of Critical Conversations: creating space for and educating one another about our multiple cultural contexts, activism, civil discourse, and academic engagement.