Returning to the Family Album

This 2-hour workshop invites participants to gather and write about or alongside family photographs–a small selection of images or subarchive of your choice from family albums that you wish to spend time with.

Through readings, guided prompts, and collective writing time, we’ll explore different ways of entering a photograph–through memory and nostalgia, absence and grief, grammar and aesthetic, personal and collective histories, fiction and speculation, research and restoration, political and social contexts, or simply as a way of staying related to someone within the photograph.

The session begins with a short lecture and discussion, followed by a focused 45-minute writing period, and concludes with some reflective time together. Participants are free to write in any form–poetry, letters, essays, notes, as research, or to inspire making a new artwork. This workshop emphasizes process over product; nothing will be shared or critiqued. This workshop is an invitation to return, unceremoniously but persistently, to look again and pay attention to a few photographs that ritualize remembering and writing, amidst so many others that constantly demand our time. This workshop is open to anyone and everyone. 

As part of Art is Life: Elsewhere this workshop is hosted as an offshoot series of programs hosted at partner venues across Bengaluru as part of our annual festival Art is Life.