Photo-Poetics: Writing With and Against The Image with Nina Peláez
Tuesdays from 6:00-8:00 pm ET on Zoom
August 4, August 11, August 18, August 25, & September 1, 2026
Fee: $500
WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION
Photo-Poetics: Writing With and Against The Image
What do images reveal and what do they withhold? How might poetry and hybrid forms allow us to move beyond the surface of the seen to help shape the way we make meaning about works of art—whether our own, or others? This generative workshop—designed for writers, curators, and visual artists—explores how photographs, in particular, can act as catalysts for imagination and how words, in return, help us look anew.
Each week will focus on a single contemporary writer’s work that engages explicitly with photography, contextualizing these projects within a single photographic concept—the caption, the negative, the subject, the frame, and the archive. We will read work by Robin Coste Lewis, Diana Khoi Nguyen, Nick Martino, Natasha Trethewey, and Anne Carson. A short lecture that brings together art, history, and philosophy will open each session, bringing context to the work and ideas, before opening into group conversation about the text. Together, we will explore the formal, conceptual, and aesthetic choices that these writers make— including the use of fragmentation, erasure, persona, formal experimentation, annotations, and archival materials—as they write with and against photographs.
Each session will include time for writing and reflection with the offering of a series of guided exercises that invite participants to surface hidden narratives, animate the gaps in memories and archives, and experiment with form and voice. Together, we’ll think across the threshold between word and image, and imagine new ways of making and seeing.
Aug 4: Caption
We will read Robin Coste Lewis and explore annotation, text-image relations, and their disruption.
Aug 11: Negative
We will read Diana Khoi Nguyen and consider erasure, inversion, and the conditions of absence.
Aug 18: Subject
We will read Natasha Trethewey and reflect on persona, power, and the politics of the gaze.
Aug 25: Frame We will read Nick Martino and discuss boundaries and composition, inclusion and exclusion.
Sept 1: ArchiveWe will read Anne Carson and think about accretion, association, assemblage, and the afterlife of objects.
Nina C. Peláez is a writer, educator, artist, and curator. Her work—across disciplines—is shaped by a background in art history, literature, and ecology. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Poetry Foundation, The Iowa Review, Poetry Northwest, and Rattle, among others. Her collection In The House of Men was recently named the winner of the 2026 Snowbound Chapbook Prize, and is forthcoming with Tupelo Press. She is Associate Director for The Merwin Conservancy and has previously held positions at the Smith College Museum of Art, Williams College Museum of Art, High Museum of Art, and Brooklyn Museum. She holds an MFA from Bennington College and an MA in Art History from Williams College.