Foundry Photojournalism Workshop

Foundry Instructor Michael Robinson Chávez exchanges introductions with his students at the start of Foundry 2012. Courtesy, © Suzie Katz 2012
Foundry provides more than just photojournalism classes. It creates an international hub for new connections. "That’s what we want, we want people who wouldn’t normally be able to come to come and learn and tell their own stories," says Eric Beecroft. Courtesy, © Suzie Katz 2011
Outdoors at Foundry Photojournalism Workshop in Chiang Mai, Thailand, instructor Magie Steber works one-on-one with a student. Courtesy, © Suzie Katz 2012
Alison Morley points to the cover of LIFE as she teaches. Courtesy, © Suzie Katz 2011
Henrik Kastenskov points to his diagram on "building a soundscape" during his multimedia class at Foundry Photojournalism Workshop. Courtesy, © Suzie Katz 2011
Maggie Steber addresses her class at Foundry 2011. Courtesy, © Suzie Katz 2011 Courtesy, © Suzie Katz 2011
Foundry Instructor Ron Haviv reviews student work during Portfolio Review Night At Foundry 2011 in Argentina. Courtesy, © Suzie Katz 2011.
Foundry students enjoy a snack while signing up for portfolio reviews. Courtesy, © Suzie Katz 2012
Maggie Steber works with a student during a portfolio review in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Courtesy, © Suzie Katz 2012
Portfolio reviews run into the evening at Foundy Photojournalism Workshop 2012. Courtesy, © Suzie Katz, 2012
The full moon presides over Foundry Photojounalism Workshop 2012 in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Courtesy, © Suzie Katz 2012
To capture the excitement of Foundry for posterity, Andrea Bruce has her students leap into the pool for their class photo. Courtesy, © Suzie Katz 2012

Foundry 2022

Foundry: Bringing top-tier, affordable photojournalism education to the world

Deadline to apply: November 4, 2022 at 11:59pm EDT

November 10th: Welcome event with special presentations

November 10th to December 8th: Four online sessions comprising of three small group classes (no more than eight students per class) and a one-on-one meeting with your teacher.

December 9th-11th: Presentations followed by Q&A, student presentations, awards, portfolio reviews and social mixers. We’ll learn and then celebrate!

Foundry Photojournalism Workshop provides majority world students who could not otherwise afford it, a chance to learn from some of the world's most well-respected photojournalists and photography professionals. During the pandemic, PhotoWings will partner with the VII Academy to offer an online version of the Workshop.

Following up on a conversation on the Lightstalkers website, an online community of photojournalists and travelers, Foundry first came into being in 2008 when Co-Founders Eric and Sharon Beecroft, asked some of the top working photojournalists to donate a week of their time to the project. They wanted volunteer teachers with real world experience whose enthusiasm and passion for photography, and skill in teaching the craft, would ignite their students’ desire to tell the stories of their own communities. The response was overwhelming.

Today Foundry instructors still volunteer their time and talent, coming to the workshop from the region and abroad, bringing with them a commitment to a better future through responsible visual journalism. Past instructors have included Ben Bohane, Paula Braunstein, Andrea Bruce, Oscar Castillo, Michael Robinson Chavez, James Whitlow Delano, Edward Echwalu, Andrew Eisebo, Ashley Gilbertson, Ron Haviv, Natalie Keyssar, Sebastian Liste, Kirsten Luce, Jared Moossy, Ashima Nahrain, Daniel Schwartz, Smita Sharma, Nichole Sobecki, Maggie Steber, John Stanmeyer, Sarah Waiswa, and Adrianna Zehbrauskas, among others.

Foundry Photojournalism Workshops have been held in Mexico City (2008), Manali (2009), Istanbul (2010), Buenos Aires (2011), Chiang Mai (2012), Sarajevo (2013), Antigua (2014), Bali (2015), Cape Town (2016), a return to Mexico City for the 10th year anniversary (2017), Kolkata (2018) and Kigali (2019). Foundry students have gone on to successful careers, publishing stories for National Geographic, The New York Times, Time, Stern, Paris Match and have won prestigious awards ranging from the Pulitzer Prize to POY to World Press and more. Some have returned to Foundry to teach the next generation.

In our 10 years as a Foundry partner, PhotoWings has created an archive of Foundry faculty interviews, Lessons In The Field, evening presentations and photos to educate and inspire the Foundry community and beyond. Our extensive online content and lessons on our website are available to all.

Foundry 2021 operated from
November 10 to December 12, 2021.

PhotoWings proudly helps support the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop as part of our mission to highlight and help facilitate the power of photography to influence the world. PhotoWings and Foundry share a mutual conviction in the importance of photography being better understood, created, utilized, seen and saved.

PhotoWings believes the insights, skills, thinking, and perspectives from successful members of the photographic world are translatable and transferable into education, work, and life in general. Year after year, Foundry’s remarkable instructors and staff demonstrate the value of these qualities, and we are honored to share this content with the world.

PhotoWings sat down with six of the esteemed instructors at the 2014 Foundry Photojournalism Workshop and asked them a simple question: What is it about photography that you find so powerful and important? They share heartfelt thoughts about their experiences and the work they have dedicated their lives to.

2022 Instructors

Ben Brody

Ben Brody is an independent photographer, educator, and picture editor working on long-form projects related to the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and their aftermath. He is the Director of Photography for The GroundTruth Project and Report for America, and a co-founder of Mass Books.

His first book, Attention Servicemember, was shortlisted for the 2019 Aperture – Paris Photo First Book Award and is now in its second edition. He is also the author of Endgame Afghanistan and 300m. Ben holds an MFA from Hartford Art School’s International Low-Residency Photography program. He resides in western Massachusetts.

Class: The Documentary Photobook

If you want to really take control of your long-form visual storytelling, the photobook may be the medium for you. In this course, we will deconstruct narrative documentary photobooks and zines, and examine what works and doesn’t work – from the edit and sequence to the binding and materials. We will also familiarize you with the current photobook publishing landscape. If you want to work on an existing book project or make a zine during the workshop, we will get you there!

Andrea Bruce

Andrea Bruce is a documentary photographer whose work focuses on ideas of democracy and people living in the aftermath of war. She concentrates on the social issues that are sometimes ignored and often ignited in war’s wake.
Her clients include National Geographic and The New York Times as well as many publications around the globe. Andrea was a 2016 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University where she studied political theory.

Andrea started working in Iraq in 2003, bringing a local reporter’s knack for intimacy and community focus to the lives of Iraqis and the US military.
For eight years she worked as a staff photographer for The Washington Post, where she originated and authored a weekly column called “Unseen Iraq.” She also worked at The Concord Monitor and The St. Petersburg Times after graduating from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1995. She is now a member/ owner of the photo agency NOOR. In 2011 she was an Alicia Patterson Fellow and in 2019 she was a CatchLight Fellow and a National Geographic Explorer.

Her awards include the 2018 IWMF Anja Niedringhaus award, a 2014 World Press Photo 2nd prize for Daily Life and the inaugural Chris Hondros Fund Award in 2012 for the “commitment, willingness and sacrifice shown in her work.” She has been named Photographer of the Year four times by the WHNPA, received several awards from the Pictures of the Year International contest, including the 2017 Environmental Vision Award, and was awarded the prestigious John Faber Award from the Overseas Press Club in New York.

Currently, she is based in North Carolina, is the author of the weekly Bulletin, “Down in the County”, teaches for New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute is in the process of getting her MFA from the School of the Art Institute Chicago.

Vanessa Charlot

Vanessa Charlot is an award-winning documentary photographer, photojournalist, filmmaker, lecturer and curator and media safety trainer. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Multimedia at the University of Mississippi School of Journalism and New Media. Her work focuses on the intersectionality of race, politics, culture and sexual/gender expression to explore the human experience. The purpose of her work is to produce visual representations free of an oppressive gaze. Vanessa seeks to humanize Black bodies through her photography, restoring the dignity and vitality of those often shot as subjects divorced from context, motives, and histories. Her work invites us all to question our relationship to what we think about when we see Black bodies as static images and in motion.

She has worked throughout the U.S., Caribbean and Southeast Asia. Her photographs have been commissioned by the New York Times, Gucci, Vogue, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, Oprah Magazine, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Apple, New York Magazine, Buzzfeed, Artnet News, The Washington Post and other national and international publications. Vanessa lectures at the International Center of Photography and is the recipient of the International Women’s Media Foundation Courage in Journalism Award for 2021. She is currently an Emerson Collective Fellow.

Michael Robinson Chavez

Michael Robinson Chávez, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning photographer for The Washington Post, became seduced by photography after a friend gave him a camera before a trip to Peru in 1988. A native Californian and half Peruvian, he previously worked with the Associated Press, The Boston Globe and The Los Angeles Times and is a graduate of San Francisco State University. Robinson Chávez has covered assignments in over 75 countries including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the collapse of Venezuela, violence in Mexico, tsunamis in Indonesia and Chile, the Egyptian revolution, gold mining in Peru and the 2006 Hezbollah/Israeli war.

He was part of a team from The Washington Post awarded a 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of the January 6th coup attempt on the US Capitol and for Explanatory Journalism in 2019 covering climate change. He is also a three-time winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Photojournalism and was named Photographer of the Year by Pictures of the Year International in 2020. His photographs have been exhibited in France, Australia, Peru, United States, Croatia, Georgia and Spain. He teaches photo workshops through the Leica Akademie.

Alan Chin

Alan Chin was born and raised in New York City’s Chinatown. Since 1996, he has worked in China, the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Central Asia. Domestically, Alan has followed the historic trail of the Civil Rights movement, documented the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and covered the 2008 presidential campaign. He is a contributing photographer to Newsweek, the New York Times and BagNews, an editor and photographer at Newsmotion and a photographer at Facing Change: Documenting America (FCDA). Alan’s work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

Danny Wilcox Frazier

Documentary photographer and filmmaker Danny Wilcox Frazier focuses his work on marginalized communities both in and outside of the United States. Frazier has photographed people struggling to survive the economic shift that has devastated rural communities throughout America, including in his home state of Iowa. His work acknowledges isolation and neglect while also celebrating perseverance and strength.

Frazier’s photographs have been included in numerous books including: MVP (The Millennium Villages Project), de.Mo design Ltd. November 2016, Detroit: An American Autopsy by Charlie LeDuff with the essay, Evidence Detroit, by Danny Wilcox Frazier, The Penguin Press, February 2013, War Is Only Half The Story, Vol. IV, The Aftermath Project, January 2012, burn.02, burn inc, September 2011, and Land – Country Life in the Urban Age (catalogue), Noorderlicht, October 2010.

Frazier is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships including: Aaron Siskind Foundation, Individual Photographer’s Fellowship (2016), Emergency Fund, Magnum Foundation (2016), The Aftermath Project (2009), Humanities Iowa, an affiliate of the NEH (2009), W. Eugene Smith Grant finalist (2007 and 2008), and the Stanley Fellowship for Graduate Research Abroad (2003).

Alison Morley

Alison Morley is a photography coach, editor and educator. She is chair emerita of the Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism Program at the International Center of Photography. She has taught workshops all over the world and has worked at various magazines and newspapers as Photo Editor, including for The New York Times, Esquire and LifeMagazine. She has written on photography for Elle Magazineand is an editor for major monographs such as The Ninth Floorby Jessica Dimmock, Andrea Star Reese’s Urban Cave and Ron Haviv’s Blood and Honey. She is currently curating the Daegu Photo Biennale 2021 in Korea and editing forthcoming photo books.

Christopher Morris

Christopher Morris was born in California in 1958 and began his career as a documentary conflict photographer working almost exclusively for TIME magazine, where he has been on contract since 1990. He has been credited with redefining political coverage in America during his years working at the White House for TIME magazine from 2000 till 2009. While working as a photojournalist, Morris expanded his work into the fashion world. Morris is a founding member of VII Photo Agency.

Brian Palmer

Brian Palmer’s work as a multimedia journalist and documentarian has appeared in/on the New York Times, Smithsonian magazine, PBS, BBC, Reveal, and other outlets. He received the Peabody Award, for “Monumental Lies,” a 2018 Reveal radio story about public funding for Confederate sites with colleagues Seth Wessler and Esther Kaplan.

Palmer began his career as a fact-checker for the Village Voice. Before going freelance in 2002, he served in a number of staff positions—Beijing bureau chief for US News & World Report; staff writer at Fortune; and on-air correspondent at CNN. Palmer was awarded a Ford Foundation grant for Full Disclosure, a video documentary about his three media embeds in Iraq with U.S. Marines, completed in 2009. Currently, Palmer is the Joan Konner Visiting Professor of Journalism at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Links to work:
VQR Online
Gund Foundation
Pulitzer Center
Emerson Collective

Josué Rivas

Josué Rivas (Mexica and Otomi) is an Indigenous Futurist, creative director, visual storyteller and educator working at the intersection of art, technology, journalism, and decolonization. His work aims to challenge the mainstream narrative about Indigenous peoples, co-create with the community, and serve as a vehicle for collective healing.

He is a 2020 Catchlight Leadership Fellow, Magnum Foundation Photography and Social Justice Fellow, founder of INDÍGENA, co-founder of Indigenous Photograph and Curator at Indigenous TikTok.

His work has appeared in National Geographic, The New York Times, Apple, Nike and Converse amongst others.

Josué is a guest in the traditional village sites of the Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Bands of Chinook, Tualatin, Kalapuya, Molalla (Portland, OR.)

Josué will be teaching about decolonizing the language in photography, how to co-create with community, purpose and creative practice and self care as a visual storyteller.

Nina Robinson

Nina Robinson is an award-winning documentary photographer and educator based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her work has been described as tender, cinematic and visceral. It has been featured on international platforms including National Geographic, The New York Times and Time‘s Lightbox. She covers stories in the American South, Midwest, and East Coast. Robinson developed a groundbreaking and innovative phototherapy program in 2015 with senior citizens at William Hodson Community Center in the Bronx. Through the use of photography, older residents were able to openly explore personal and social issues. She continues similar social workshops and programming centered around photography across the country.

Nichole Sobecki

Nichole Sobecki is an American photographer and filmmaker based in Nairobi, Kenya.

After graduating from Tufts University, Nichole spent the early years of her career in Turkey, Lebanon, and Syria, focusing on regional issues related to identity, conflict, and human rights. From 2012-2015, she led Agence France-Presse’s East Africa video bureau and was a 2014 Rory Peck Awards News Finalist for her coverage of the Westgate mall attacks in Kenya. Nichole’s work has been recognized by Pictures of the Year, the One World Media Awards, the Alexandra Boulat Award for Photojournalism, The Magenta Foundation, and The Jacob Burns Film Center, among others, and her work has been exhibited internationally.

She is a contributor to Everyday Africa, a collection of images shot on mobile phones across the continent, and an attempt to showcase the moments missing from dramatic news images — everyday life that is neither idealized nor debased.

Nichole aims to create photographs and films that demand consideration for the lives of those represented – their joys, challenges, and ultimately their humanity.

Maggie Steber

Maggie Steber, a documentary photographer specializing in humanistic stories, has worked in 67 countries. Her honors include a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation in 2017, the Leica Medal of Excellence, World Press Photo Foundation, the Overseas Press Club, Pictures of the Year, the Medal of Honor for Distinguished Service to Journalism from the University of Missouri, the Alicia Patterson Grant, the Ernst Haas Grant, and a Knight Foundation grant for the New American Newspaper project. Steber has worked in Haiti for three decades. Aperture published her monograph, “Dancing on Fire.”

In 2013, Steber was named as one of eleven “Women of Vision” by National Geographic Magazine with an exhibition that traveled to five cities. Steber served as a Newsweek contract photographer and as Assistant Managing Editor of Photography and Features at The Miami Herald, overseeing projects that won a Pulitzer. Her work is included in the Library of Congress, the Guggenheim Foundation Collection, and The Richter Library. She exhibits internationally. Clients include National Geographic Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine, AARP, The Guardian, and Geo Magazine. Steber teaches workshops internationally including at the World Press Joop Swart Master Classes, the International Center for Photography, Foundry Workshops, and the Obscura Photo Festival.

Amber Terranova

Amber Terranova is an experienced photo director, educator and visual producer based between New York and New Mexico. She has worked as the Education Director for Magnum Photos and held faculty positions at The School of Visual Arts and the International Center of Photography.

Amber has extensive marketing, photo directing, commissioning and consultancy experience for multiple major brands and publications around the world. She has worked as a photo editor at New York, Outside, Photo District News, The New Yorker and People. In 2013 Amber was the interim Director at the Bilder Nordic School of Photography in Oslo, Norway. Amber is committed to photography education and to helping photographers realize their creative and career potential. She has taught photography workshops in the US, Europe, Asia and has been a guest lecturer at several institutions. In addition, she has judged a number of international photo competitions. Amber is an advisory council board member for CENTER, a non-profit that honors, supports, and provides opportunities to gifted and committed photographers.

Image Gallery

Interviews and InSights

PhotoWings and Foundry Photojournalism Workshop teamed up to bring you interviews with some of Foundry’s instructors. Click on the videos below to see the instructors’ InSights into some of photography’s interesting and important topics.