“Photographing the Personal” with Maggie Steber
As photographers, we are most often telling the stories of others. We are a curious bunch and want to know what happened, when, and why. We are very privileged that people let us into their lives, often at the very worst times. This lecture is about how we can enter into these intimate and difficult situations in a tender and respectful way with people who we don’t know, but whose stories are critical. It will go one step further in addressing how we, the storytellers, also can apply photography to sharing our own stories, and why that is often life-changing. Maggie explains, “I’ve always thought that if we ask people to be so vulnerable before us, we should be willing to be vulnerable and open ourselves. Sometimes in doing so, we learn things about ourselves and our families and friends we never knew and these can be great gifts.”
Maggie discusses her work in Haiti over a 30-year period, as well as a 3-year project on face transplants and her 9-year project of following her mother through the melancholic voyage of memory loss and the gifts that came along with staying the course and being a warrior.
This lecture was originally hosted at VII Interactive, a new resource for sharing insights and information on the craft of visual storytelling. We are building different platforms within the VII ecosystem, where the public can engage directly, online with a live instructor. VII Interactive offers programming that is free and available to everyone, in addition to paid classes and individual mentoring that can be fashioned to your needs.