Synopsis

In this installment of The Photography Workshop Series, internationally acclaimed color photographers Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb, offer their expert insight into street photography and the poetic image. Through words and photographs—their own and others'—they invite the reader into the heart of their artistic processes.

The Webbs share their thoughts about a wide range of practical and philosophical issues, from questions about seeing and being in the world with a camera, to how to shape a complete body of work in a way that's both structured and intuitive. Award-winning novelist Teju Cole, a student of the Webbs, provides the introduction.

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Alex Webb
(San Francisco, 1952) Best known for his complex and vibrant color photographs of serendipitous or enigmatic moments, often in places with socio-political tensions, over the past 45 years Webb has worked in places as varied as the U.S.-Mexico border, Haiti, Istanbul, and, most recently, a number of U.S. cities. He has published 17 photography books, including The Suffering of Light, a survey of 30 years of his color photographs, and Memory City (with poet and photographer Rebecca Norris Webb, his wife and creative partner), a meditation about film, time, and the city of Rochester, NY, itself, the long-time home of Kodak, in the year following the company’s bankruptcy. His most recent books include La Calle: Photographs from Mexico, and Brooklyn: The City Within, with Rebecca Norris Webb. He has received numerous awards and grants including a Hasselblad Foundation Grant in 1998, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1990, and the Leica Medal of Excellence in 2000. He's a full member of Magnum Photos since in 1979.

Rebecca Norris Webb
(Rushville, Indiana, 1956). Originally a poet, her photography books often interweave photographs and text. These include the monographs The Glass Between Us: Reflections on Urban Creatures (2006), My Dakota: An Elegy for My Brother Who Died Unexpectedly (2012), and Night Calls (2020) — as well as collaborations with her husband and creative partner, Alex Webb: Violet Isle: A Duet of Photographs from Cuba (2009), Memory City (2014), On Street Photography and the Poetic Image (2014), Slant Rhymes (2017), and Brooklyn: The City Within (2019).

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