The Facade of Beautiful Imagery and Shiny Objects with Davion Alston

Through lectures, assignments, critiques, designated creative time, and image sharing, this five-week course focuses on image culture and examines how “beauty” is defined, constructed, and challenged through photography and lens- based processes. Students will experiment with lighting, composition, portraiture, and conceptual approaches while developing a personal visual language. 

Together, we'll examine beautiful imagery within the context of our current image culture--from editorial and film to social media, the algorithm, pop culture, and institutional spaces--and ask how beauty operates across these landscapes. We'll also confront the growing instability of the photographic image itself: what we consume as truth, the slip between photography and AI-generated imagery, and the role of misinformation in shaping what we believe we're looking at.

Throughout the workshop, students will engage in critical dialogue around the ethics of the gaze, how beauty is used to distract, to propagate misinformation, and to sell desire to the viewer, and what responsibilities image-makers carry when beauty becomes a tool of persuasion.

Each week consists of a lecture, activity and discussion, and an assignment:

Week 1: What Is Beauty? Foundations & Visual Language 

Week 2: Beauty in People and Identity – Portraiture 

Week 3: Beauty in the Everyday 

Week 4: Conceptual Beauty, Storytelling, and Personal Voice 

Week 5: Final Project & Critique 

Beginning on Wednesday, June 17th, this class will meet weekly from 6 - 9 PM, for five weeks at Atlanta Center for Photography.
 

Instructor Bio:

Alston received his MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2023 and his BFA from the Welch School of Art and Design at Georgia State University in 2016. He is represented by Mono8 Gallery in Manila, Philippines.

His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at spaces such as AMANITA in New York City, François Ghebaly in Los Angeles, Atlanta Center for Photography, The Afro-American Cultural Center at Yale University, ISA Art Gallery in Jakarta, Indonesia, Hammonds House Museum in Atlanta, Georgia, Green Gallery at the Yale School of Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, Belfast Photo festival in Ireland, and the South East Asia Art Focus in Singapore. Interviews are featured in publications such as Aperture Magazine, Atlanta Journal Constitution, BURNAWAY, The New York Times, Octopus Publication, Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles, ArtsATL, Art & Mark, and WhiteWall.