This class invites you to consider what constitutes an archive — from official documentation to whatever is in your pocket — and explore how these materials can inform your photographic practice. Together, we will look at inherited images or personal ephemera and use them as tools and prompts to investigate the roots of your motivation as a photographer.

Through weekly assignments, group exercises, and lectures on artists working with archival material (such as Zofia Rydet, Jo Spence, and Joachim Schmid), this class pays particular attention to vernacular photography, using snapshots or found images as jumping off points. We’ll explore the family photo album as a form of historical inquiry, considering how everyday images, gaps or misremembered moments can become generative rather than limiting. This class is particularly suited to photographers whose process-driven practices engage with domestic space, family or chosen family, personal histories or the plasticity of memory. You’ll be creating new photographic work — whether it’s for a standalone piece or a long-term project — and gain tools and strategies to continue developing ideas using personal archives.