Community Cyanotype Workshop
New Orleans Healing Center
September 28, 2019
11am – 3pm
Free | All Ages | Please RSVP
PhotoNOLA, in partnership with New Orleans Healing Center, is pleased to present a free community workshop in celebration of World Cyanotype Day. On Saturday, September 28, photographers and artists across the globe will gather in backyards, parking lots, galleries and parks to connect, create and celebrate the cyanotype, a simple and fun photographic process. People of all ages are invited to come learn and play.
Learn from artists David Armentor, Natasha Sanchez, and Robert Schaefer about the historic process and how to create your own sun prints. Participants will use botanical specimens and other small objects to create one-of-a-kind photograms on light-sensitive fabric squares. Robert will share a brief visual presentation on the history and chemistry of the cyanotype, with examples for inspiration, at 11am and 1pm.
Cyanotype, a photographic printing process that results in graphic blue and white prints, is the perfect place to start an education in alternative photographic processes. Invented in 1842 by Sir John Herschel, not only is this medium low in cost and simple to master, it also yields beautiful and distinctive results.
Each participant will have the opportunity to create several 12×12″ cyanotypes. All are encouraged to leave behind one print on the theme of Land/Sea/Sky to be exhibited at the Healing Center, with other cyanotypes from around the world, during PhotoNOLA.
All supplies will be provided, but feel free to bring your own objects or foliage with interesting silhouettes to use in your compositions. Attendees are welcome to stay for the entire day, or drop in at any time from 11 till 3 to make a few prints. Please RSVP to help us plan for materials.
This workshop is presented in partnership with the New Orleans Healing Center and Blueprints on Fabric. You can read more about the origins of World Cyanotype Day here.
Instructors Bios
Schaefer’s photographs have been exhibited internationally, including one-person exhibitions in the Amerika Hauses in Munich, Hamburg, Hannover and Frankfurt, Germany; Kulturhaus in Graz, Austria; a 25-Year Retrospective at the Huntsville Museum of Art, in Alabama; the Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan in Delhi, and the Government Museum and Art Gallery in Chandigarh, India.
Schaefer’s work is held in collections including the Jule Collins Smith Musuem of Fine Art, The Museum of Modern Art, MFA,Houston, and the Bibliotheque Nationale. His cyanotype work was included in the book Photography’s Antiquarian Avant-garde by Lyle Rexer (2010). In 2015, he completed a one-month artist residency in Can Serrat, outside of Barcelona, Spain producing cyanotypes of photographs taken in Barcelona.
Schaefer taught photography for twelve years at New York University before moving to New Orleans, LA in 2015. He continues to teach Cyanotype Workshops at The Penumbra Foundation/Center for Alternative Photography in New York City and now, sponsored by Penumbra, in New Orleans. In November he is scheduled to instruct a Cyanotype Workshop at the New Orleans Museum of Art. His photography is represented by the Domeischel Gallery in New York City.