The Photobook Lab Presents: Structure and Sequence
Instructors: Cristian Ordóñez & Kate Schneider
Friday, May 3 – Sunday, May 5, 2024, 10am–5pm
CONTACT Photography Festival, 80 Spadina Ave, Suite 205, Toronto
$300

Applications are now closed; thank you for your interest.

Created to help emerging and mid-career photographers realize their book projects, this three-day workshop led by artists Cristian Ordóñez and Kate Schneider will guide participants in the clear direction of a photobook that they can propose for grants and publishers. 

The workshop will include sequencing and layout activities, peer-led critiques, and conversations with guest photographers, editors, and designers of recognized and international experience. 

– Tiffany Jones (founder, Overlapse, London, UK)
– Melissa Pallini and Martina Zanin (Ask Again Studio, Rome/Milan, Italy)
– Shane Rocheleau (Photographer and 2023 Guggenheim Fellow, Richmond, VA)

We are also pleased to include the following local reviewers with publishing experience:

– Clea Forkert (graphic designer)
– Ben Freedman (lens-based artist)
– Zackery Hobler (lens-based artist)
– Lauren Wickware (graphic designer)

This workshop, held at the CONTACT office in downtown Toronto, is subject to an application process. It is free to apply; successful participants will be notified by Wednesday, April 17, 2024 and invoiced for the workshop fee.

Please provide the following in one (1) PDF to [email protected]:

– 10-15 images from one project or series
– Statement about your project and how you envision it in photobook form
– What you are hoping to learn from this workshop ie. best design practices, how to sequence your project, etc.

Successful participants are expected to bring at least two copies of 20-30 small prints from one body of work or series, and a laptop with InDesign installed. Previous design experience is not required, but a working knowledge of InDesign is a plus. No additional materials will be required. 

Instructor Bios:

Cristian Ordóñez (b. 1976, Santiago de Chile) has been based in Toronto since 2008. He is an independent graphic designer, photographer and publisher. These three practices constantly merge within his process. With his photographic work he has won the Urbanautica Institute Award (Italy), the Burtynsky Grant, the OMNE – Osservatorio Mobile Nord Est Land residency program prize 2023-2025 (Italy); has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Art Council; shortlisted by Getxophoto (Spain) and nominated for the Leica Oskar Barnack Award (Germany). Ordóñez has taught workshops in collaboration with VU Photo (Québec), OCAD University, Gallery 44 and Toronto Metropolitan University. His publications are collected at libraries including the National Gallery of Canada, the Museum of Modern Art, San Telmo Museum, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the National Library of Australia, among others. He divides his time working with photography and graphic design, and as a photo editor and design director for the Vermont and Toronto-based publisher of artists books and ephemera Another Earth, which he has been a part of since 2020

Kate Schneider (b. 1980, Cleveland, Ohio) is an artist of settler ancestry living in Tkaronto (Toronto). As a life-long resident of the Great Lakes region, her artistic practice considers her personal and ethical relationship to her home and environment during a time of climate crisis. She has received funding from the MacLaren Art Centre’s John Hartman Award (2020) and the Ontario Arts Council. Kate’s works have been shown extensively throughout North America in such galleries as the Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art (Toronto), Harbourfront Centre (Toronto), Spellerberg Projects (Texas), and the Great Plains Art Museum (Nebraska), and published in numerous books and publications, such as PDN’s Photo Annual, Women Photographers International Archive (WOPHA), and What Makes a Lake by Another Earth Press. Kate’s first book, How to Understand a Rock, was produced through the Penumbra Foundation’s Risograph Publication Residency (2023).

Guest presenters and speakers:

Ask Again is a design and creative direction studio founded and run by Melissa Pallini and Martina Zanin. Melissa Pallini is an Italian-Canadian photo retoucher, graphic designer, and fine art printer based between Rome and Barcelona. Since 2016 she has been collaborating with Claudio Palmisano’s Mandrione8 studio, where she works with the biggest international magazines and award-winning authors in the photojournalism field. Between 2018 and 2020 she taught post-production at Istituto Superiore di Fotografia (ISFCI) in Rome. In the same period initiates her collaboration with the independent publishing house Skinnerboox. In 2022 she became the new creative designer at Fantini Wines. 

Martina Zanin lives and works in Milan. She is a visual artist who works with a wide range of mediums, central to her practice are photography, writing, installation, and artist books. Zanin is the author of the photobook I Made Them Run Away, published by Skinnerboox, and Older Than Love, a self-published artist book. With the installation Dear F. she is the winner of Premio Terna 2023 (youth section). In 2021, she won the first prize of Camera Work, and was among the winners of Giovane Fotografia Italiana and Cantica21. Italian Contemporary Art Everywhere, promoted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (MAECI), the Italian Ministry of Culture (MiC), and the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity. Zanin has been nominated for the Foam Paul Huf Award 2019 and the C/O Berlin Talent Award 2020, two international prestigious awards for visual arts.

Tiffany Jones is the founder of Overlapse, a London-based photobook imprint started in 2015 while researching ‘Dynamics of the Photobooks Market’ for her MA in Publishing with Oxford Brookes University. With over 30 years dedicated to arts publishing and photojournalism, she is an editor, designer, researcher and educator working with programmes and institutions around the world. She collaborates in tandem with photographers and artists to communicate through the making of unique, desirable, and beautifully produced books. Subjects and stories address social, cultural, and environmental issues, and highlight enduring and universal themes connected to human experience. Since 2020, Tiffany has been a Lecturer in photobook development at London College of Communication, University of the Arts. Previously, she studied photojournalism in Canada (her home country) and worked as an independent photographer for several years, exhibiting her own projects.

Shane Rocheleau (MFA, Virginia Commonwealth University) is an American photographer who confronts the endemic position of toxic masculinity and white supremacy within the American experience. Rocheleau has exhibited in the United States, Spain, Russia, Brazil, Australia, Ukraine, The United Kingdom, India, and Germany.  His photographs have been featured in a wide variety of print and online publications, including Aperture’s The PhotoBook Review, Dear Dave Magazine, The Washington Post, and British Journal of Photography. Rocheleau’s three monographs – You Are Masters Of The Fish And Birds And All The Animals (2018), The Reflection In The Pool (2019), and Lakeside (2022) – are published by Gnomic Book.  His work is variously collected by the Museum of Modern Art, Huis Marseille, the Vogue Italia Collection, and Tate Britain, amongst others. Rocheleau is a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow and currently lives and works in Richmond, Virginia.