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Access requirements
The Whitechapel Gallery is committed to making all of our events as accessible as possible for every audience member. Please contact access@whitechapelgallery.org if you would like to discuss a particular request and we will gladly discuss with you the best way to accommodate it.
Information about access on site at the gallery is available here https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/visit/access/
This includes information about Lift access; Borrowing wheelchairs & seating; Assistance Animals; Parking; Toilets and baby care facilities; Blind & Partially Sighted Visitors; Subtitles and transcripts; British Sign Language (BSL) and hearing induction loops; Deaf Messaging Service (DMS).
About This Event
This workshop takes place in the Creative Studio on the 3rd floor at Whitechapel Gallery, which is accessible by stairs and lift.
This workshop lasts 3 hours and is free of charge, but you must book your place online in advance.
If you are no longer able to attend, please cancel you ticket. We will operate a small waitlist on the day for any no shows.
This event is suitable for those over the age of 16
Transport
To the best of our knowledge, there are no planned disruptions to local transport on the date of the event.
Our nearest train station – Aldgate East Underground (1 min) is not wheelchair accessible. The closest wheelchair accessible stations are Whitechapel (15 min), Shoreditch High Street (15 min) or Liverpool Street (15 min).
Free parking for Blue Badge holders is available at the top of Osborn Street in the pay and display booths for an unlimited period. Spaces are available on a first come, first served basis.
THIS WORKSHOP IS NOW FULLY BOOKED. WE WILL OPERATE A LIMITED WAITLIST ON THE DAY AT THE MAIN INFO DESK AT THE GALLERY.
Too often, black and LGBTQI+ photographers’ work is appraised largely based on its subject matter. Identity thinking and a socio-political framing is privileged above the photographic ‘act’, even though the two are intimately entwined.
This photographic ‘play-shop’ with Ajamu X will encourage participants to approach their image making through an emphasis on process and production. By foregrounding aesthetics, experimentation, risk taking, sensuality and pleasure, participants will develop a more embodied and nuanced dialogue in relation to the sensual-material attributes of their photographic practice.
This is a hands-on and participatory workshop, which will include discussions, a pop-up photographic studio, and a professional model (for both portraiture and nude photography).
PLEASE NOTE: part of the workshop will involve nude photography, so there will be a professional nude model present for this section.
This workshop is catered towards folks with an existing photographic practice or interest in photography.
What to bring with you:
Reference materials will be provided at the end of the session.
Sensing the Studio with Ajamu X is part of our specially curated Late with Black Obsidian Sound System which accompanies our current exhibition Donald Rodney: Visceral Canker.
Ajamu X (FRPS) is a darkroom/fine art photographic artist. His practice places the sensual -material attributes of production, making and process at the centre of the work and whose subject matter is similarly focused on sensuality.
His highly crafted images privilege those tangible/tactile sensuous elements of a socially engaged photographic practice which literally/metaphorically rubs up against the flattening out of black queer photographic practices to simple and staid notions of identity – thinking and a socio-political framing.
His work has been exhibited in many prestigious museums, galleries worldwide and alternative spaces worldwide. In 2022, he was canonised by The Trans Pennine Travelling Sisters as the Patron Saint of Darkrooms and received an honorary fellowship from the Royal Photographic Society.
His work sits within many private and public collections including: The Rose Art Museum, GOMA, Autograph, Tate Britain, Arts Council of England, and the Victoria & Albert Museum.
Black Obsidian Sound System (B.O.S.S.) was established in the summer of 2018 with the intention of bringing together a community of queer, trans and non-binary Black people and people of colour involved in art, sound and radical activism. Following in the legacies of sound system culture they wanted to learn, build and sustain a resource for our collective struggles. The black-led system, based in London, is available to use or rent by community groups and others with the purpose of amplifying and connecting them.
B.O.S.S’s work includes renting the system to the community at subsidised rates or for free, technical workshops, live performance events, club nights, art installations and various creative commissions including a short film ‘Collective Hum’ (2019) for LUX & the ICO and ‘The Only Good System is a Sound System’ for Liverpool Biennial (2020). In 2021 B.O.S.S was shortlisted for the Turner Prize and presented an exhibition at Herbert Museum and Gallery Coventry.
Members of the collective include: Adedamola Bajomo, Kiera Coward Deyell, Phoebe Collings-James, Evan Ifekoya, Onyeka Igwe, Marcus Macdonald and Virginia Wilson.
