Picture This: Writing with Photographs

They say a picture is worth a thousand words—but how do we find those words? How do we articulate what we see, feel, and imagine when we look at images from the past? In this creative nonfiction workshop, you’ll learn to bridge the gap between observation and storytelling, transforming visual memories into compelling prose.

Drawing inspiration from acclaimed writers who masterfully wove photography and narrative into evocative works, we’ll explore simple yet powerful techniques for writing with images. Bring a photograph from your personal collection, and together, we’ll craft short pieces inspired by what is within and outside the frame.

Emmanuel Iduma is the author of the travelogue A Stranger’s Pose (2018), which was longlisted for the 2019 Ondaatje Prize. His nonfiction and criticism have appeared in Aperture, AGNI, Art in America, Artforum, Granta, n+1, the New York Review of Books, the Yale Review, and other publications.

He was the inaugural recipient of the AICA-USA Irving Sandler Award for New Voices in Art Criticism and was awarded an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant and the C/O Berlin Talent Prize for Theory. In 2020, Iduma was recognised in Apollo International Art Magazine’s ‘40 under 40 Africa’ for the broad social impact of his work.

His latest book, I Am Still With You, a memoir on the aftermath of the Nigerian civil war, was published in 2023 to wide acclaim, and has been featured on best-of lists by The New Yorker, TIME, Boston Globe, Vulture, and The Republic. In 2022, Iduma was awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize in the nonfiction category.