Please join us in welcoming back Palmer Davis, faculty member at the International Center of Photography, the world’s leading institution dedicated to photography and visual culture, located in New York City. Widely exhibited and collected, Palmer is a fine art photographer and teacher who is represented in New York by ClampArt. This is the fourth and final assignment that Palmer has created for the Broken Light Collective community. There will be an online gallery of collected works coming up for all of the assignments, so make sure to send in your photographs by July 18th!

Assignment 4: “Lightness of being: The photographer as butterfly catcher.

It’s commonly understood that making art is a painful process. However, capturing images with your camera can also be as effortless as catching butterflies with a net. Look at the poetic charm of children’s art. There’s so much to be learned from it about spontaneity, lyricism, grace and gesture. Painters like Matisse understood this playful approach to art making as well as photographers like Helen Levitt and Martin Parr.

I invite you to rediscover the world through the fresh eyes of a child. Follow your bliss to the pictures you want to make instinctively, joyfully—without overthinking it. Forget about preconceived notions of composition and technique. Set yourself free to wander and wonder, to seek and find. What elusive treasures will you catch in your butterfly net? Submit one to three photographs that best express your view of the lightness of being.” 

Want to participate? Send in your photos by July 18th to get valuable feedback from the workshop leader, inclusion in a special upcoming social media gallery, as well as a possible feature on the BLC gallery site: BrokenLightCollective@gmail.com