Getting Your Work Out with Aline Smithson

DATE

May 13 & 27, 2025, 6-8 PM Eastern

LOCATION

Zoom

EVENT ORGANIZER

SE Center for Photography

The  year ahead reveals a fine-art photography landscape unlike any in the  last thirty years of photography. The traditional path of getting your  work out has changed, and the artist must think creatively about how to  adapt to the new reality of creating and selling your art. Quite a few galleries have closed their doors and others have gone virtual. In addition, photo centers and museums are looking for work that speaks to this moment in time. It can be a confusing time to be a fine-art photographer and an important time to understand the shifting sands of submitting and promoting photographs

This two-session, online workshop with Aline Smithson explains, uncovers, and helps demystify the current fine-art photography landscape as well as inspire each participant to present their photographs with thoughtful consideration. Aline addresses ideas of presentation and installation while providing a road map to taking  charge of your career.

Equally important to creating a stellar and deeply considered body of work are all the elements that surround and support it—your bio,  project statement, website—and the understanding of where and how to place the work. Participants work on elevating their written materials and all the varied elements that accompany their work.

About Aline Smithson

Aline Smithson is a visual artist, educator, and editor based in Los Angeles, California. Best known for her conceptual portraiture and a practice that uses humor and pathos to explore the performative potential of photography. Growing up in the shadow of Hollywood, her work is influenced by the elevated unreal. She received a BA in art from the University of California at Santa Barbara and was accepted into the College of Creative Studies, studying under artists such as William Wegman, Allen Ruppersburg, and Charles Garabian. After a decade-long career as a New York Fashion Editor, Smithson returned to Los Angeles and to her own artistic practice.

She has exhibited widely including over 40 solo shows at institutions such as the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Fort Collins Museum of Contemporary Art, the San Jose Art Museum, the Shanghai, Lishui, and Pingyqo Festivals in China, The Rayko Photo Center in San Francisco, the Center of Fine Art Photography in Colorado, the Tagomago Gallery in Barcelona and Paris, and the Obscura Gallery in Santa Fe. In addition, her work is held in a number of public collections and her photographs have been featured in publications including The New York Times, The New Yorker, PDN, Communication Arts, Eyemazing, Real Simple, Los Angeles, Visura, Shots, Pozytyw, and Silvershotz magazines.

In 2007, Smithson founded LENSCRATCH, a photography journal that celebrates a different contemporary photographer each day. She has been the Gallery Editor for Light Leaks Magazine, a contributing writer for Diffusion, Don’t Take Pictures, Lucida, and F Stop Magazines, has written book reviews for photo-eye, and has provided the forewords for artist’s books by Tom Chambers, Meg Griffiths, Flash Forward 12, Robert Rutoed, Nancy Baron, among others. Smithson has curated and jurored exhibitions for a number of galleries, organizations, and on-line magazines, including Review Santa Fe, Critical Mass, Flash Forward, and the Griffin Museum. In addition, she is a reviewer and educator at many photo festivals across the United States. Smithson has been teaching at the Los Angeles Center of Photography since 2001and also teaches at a variety of institutions such as ICP, SFW, MMW, and others.

In 2012, Smithson received the Rising Star Award through the Griffin Museum of Photography for her contributions to the photographic community. In 2014 and 2019, Smithson’s work was selected for Critical Mass Top 50 and she received the Excellence in Teaching Award from CENTER. In 2015, the Magenta Foundation published her retrospective monograph, Self & Others: Portrait as Autobiography. In 2016, the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum commissioned Smithson to create a series of portraits for the upcoming Faces of Our Planet Exhibition. In 2018 and 2019, Smithson was a finalist in the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize and exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in London. She was commissioned to create the book, LOST: Los Angeles for Kris Graves Projects which now sold out. Peanut Press released her monograph, Fugue State, in Fall 2021. Her books are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Getty Museum, the Los Angeles Contemporary Art Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, London, the Metropolitan Museum, the Guggenheim, among others. Smithson was honored as a 2022 Hasselblad Heroine. With the exception of her cell phone, she only shoots film.

Sold Out - Wait List

Limited to 15

SE Center Members $250, All Others $325

Refunds up to 30 days before event.

This event is organized by

SE Center for Photography

Our workshops and expeditions cover all aspects of photography and challenge, encourage and inspire the photographer in all of us. During the workshops, our complete focus is on you, the photographer.

Our instructors are working professional photographers who have a passion for sharing and inspiring. We recognize the commitment of time, energy and money it takes for you to attend a workshop and work very hard to be the best at intimately knowing our locations, providing a wealth of high quality information via excellent presentations and one on one help in the field, presenting extremely supportive and highly detailed image reviews, and doing all of this in an energy rich, supportive environment where inspiration and having fun are the hallmark of our workshops.

SE Center Workshops fully realizes that in addition to the education business we are in the inspiration business, and ultimately, we are a service business. We are here to serve you and your complete satisfaction with your workshop experience is our pledge. After all, the majority of our workshop participants are repeat customers and we know as well as anyone that we only get one chance to make a memorable first impression. 

When we publish a workshop cost it includes everything. We won't surprise you with additional Materials Costs or Model Fees. If the workshop is all day at the SE Center, we provide lunch, snacks and beverages. Before you register you know the true cost of our workshops.

GETTING YOUR WORK OUT
SE Center for Photography
104 S Main St, Greenville, SC 29601

SE Center Members $250, All Others $325