Portfolio Review
By Appointment:
Cost: R380
By appointment online at agreed upon date and time.
Time: As agreed upon/zoom invite
Through The Lens Collective’s Portfolio Review offers participants the opportunity to present their work to industry professional Michelle Loukidis, who will offer critical insight and advice towards the development of your photography skills and portfolio. Photographers will share their work with reviewers in 45 minute individual sessions.
Individual sessions will be booked in advance.
Any level of photographic expertise is accepted.
Please email for booking and further details:
Photograph by Haroun Loukidis
Ngidi Thandolwemfundo
The review session was informative and critical , as the feedback received from both the facilitators was insightful and has broadened the many possible approaches I can employ in further developing my visual narratives.
Furthermore, what I enjoyed the most was the intimacy of the review session and felt my work was thoroughly engaged and critiqued. I will definatley be attending more reviews as I continue to develop my work and would recommend other visual artists to do so.
@inzula_extraterrestrial_un...
Sankara Gibbs
Before I had even begun my portfolio review with Michelle & Michelle, they made me feel right at home. I had been a bit nervous about my work getting critiqued - but being in their presence, that fear quickly vanished. I appreciated their insight greatly. It felt as if they could really understand who I was through my 'good' photographs and where I was hiding myself in my 'not-so-good'/mediocre work. They changed the way I looked at my work and provided a much needed reflection not just on my work but myself. I'm definitely coming back for another reflection in a few months. Thank you TTL!!!
@sankara_ra
Flávio Cardoso - Recipient of the 2018 TTLC Mentorship
I started working with Michelle Loukidis at @catchupafactory last year. In our very first conversation, I was coming from a very technical background so I had to ask her, how does one teach such a subjective practice, to which she replied: first we’ll have to open your mind, and from there you’ll see.
That is exactly what happened. Working with Michelle has allowed me to perceive photography as the true artistic medium it can be. First by looking at relevant bodies of work made in our local African context, then to practice the hard exercise to translate ideas and feelings into images, starting by looking deeply on the inside.
Working with Michelle in the mentorship program, felt like picking up on where we left off 6 months prior. It has helped me develop this project I started where I challenged myself to portray how I felt about myself while belonging to a modern day privileged middle class in a globalised African country, disgraced by civil war and stigmatised by 500 years of Portuguese colonialism.
Through her experience, she has helped me visualise and consolidate my ideas by constantly challenging the thought process. She brought me down when I need grounding, and lifted me up when I needed to stop overthinking. She may not be familiar with the context I’m working, a country she’s never even been in, but without her, as much as I had to say, I don’t know if I’d be able to create images that convey my feelings with perhaps the same accuracy.
At some point, this whole mentorship stopped being about work, or photography, or art. It felt like therapy. A true liberation of self by the help of a beautiful, assertive, caring and sensitive human being.
Flávio has since been selected for the artist residency Luuanda.
Image by Flávio Cardoso
Cover image by Whitney Petersen