nearesttruthworkshops.com

Polaroid Workshop

Roger Ballen, Charles Johnstone with

support from Cyrus Mahboubian

and Brad Feuerhelm

November 5-9th 2025

Zoetrope Gallery Athens

Class Hours

11-5

Lunch from 13-14:30

Shooting before and after group meetings

Assignments will be given at the end of each daily meeting with an emphasis on each instructor making suggestions for how to produce and manipulate Polaroid. We will examine how to create narratives with instant singular photographs and how to manipulate surfaces and challenge the unconventional conventions of the Polaroid.

The focus of this revolving instructor workshop is to share different perspectives on the polaroid process while also thinking about how to expand its instamatic format to include painting, drawing and other surface variations through single and multiple frames. We will look over the history of Polaroid and its contemporary uses.

Joining us for this workshop are

Roger Ballen - is an American/South African artist who has exhibited globally and produced many books of his photography. His works are found in countless museums and institutions. His books Polaroids Volumes I & II reflect his more recent shift toward the process of drawing on Polaroids.

Charles Johnstone - is an American artist whose color photography explores typologies but also staged narratives and works reflecting on popular culture and nostalgia. He has published many books of his works and his many volumes on his Polaroid work.

Cyrus Maboubian - is a British/Iranian artist whose work is focused on the Polaroid medium. He has exhibited his Polaroid widely and his book Viscera explores his thoughts on Polaroids and their place in landscape. More recently he has explored Cut Polaroids to challenge and composite existing Polaroid elements into new diagrammatic composition while hinting at cinema.

Brad Feuerhelm - is a collector of vernacular photographs, which included Polaroids. His collection has been used to produce several books that arrange and reconstitute previous photographic archives and narratives in new and often antagonistic ways.