Master Class with Larry Fink April 25, 2009

Larry Fink is one of the most highly creative, iconoclastic and consummate photographers working today.

A practitioner of the "snapshot aesthetic", Larry Fink is catalogued with the esteemed ranks of Robert Frank, Diane Arbus and Garry Winogrand. Fink's images often display the sensitive core of interpersonal-relationships, prevalent despite social posturing, whether mingled among unctuous characters at a high-society benefit or a down-home potluck setting of family. Over the course of his forty-five year career, Fink has touched every arena of photography with his genius. He hits the sweet spot of documentary where art and facts intersect in such a unique and powerful way - text, context, and subtext intertwine and grab the viewer.

This is a VERY rare opportunity to study with a master photographer who can speak and teach equally well about being a fine artist, a documentarian and a commercial photographer. He will be able to guide your career with valuable advice in any direction: how and who to contact editors for editorial work, how to build your own project and publish a book, how to build your career as a fine artist. He has been teaching for forty-one years at some of the finest institutions in the country so you will be able to ask about MFA programs at Yale, NYU, School of Visual Arts, Cooper Union and others. The workshop will include an in-depth portfolio review where Larry will spend time getting to know each persons work, looking through not only a select 20 image portfolio, but also delving into contact sheets, prints and larger edits of your work.

Instructor: Photojournalist and educator Larry Fink began his career with a documentary on beatniks in the late 1950s. Fink has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, as well as in major retrospectives at Les Rencontres de Photographie, Arles, France; Musee de L’Elysee, Lausanne, Switzerland; and Musee de la Photographie, Charleroi, Belgium.

He is the recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships, two NEA grants, among others. Currently a professor at Bard College, he has taught photography at Yale, Parsons School of Design, and New York University.

His photographs have appeared in The New York Times, Art in America, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Time-Life Books, The New Yorker, and The Village Voice. He is the author of numerous books including Boxing, Runway (powerHouse Books, 1997, and 2000). Social Graces is a stunning achievement contrasts New York’s jet set with the rituals and gatherings of rural Pennsylvania. It was published in 1984 by Aperture and in 2001 by powerHouse Books.