WHAT ABOUT LOVE?
With photographers David Hilliard and Elinor Carucci.

Our best photographs are often inspired by immensely emotional, physical, or psychological pulls within our lives. In photographing people, places, and even objects that we are intimately acquainted with or drawn to, we are better able to communicate a more profound and specific level of understanding of it through the camera’s lens. These intense feelings are the gateway to emotionally resonant pictures. These longings can inspire and inform many working methodologies - a narrative story, a personal journal, a documentary, a visual poem, self-portraiture, and more. Many of us shy away from addressing “the emotional” within our images. In this workshop, you are encouraged to embrace these feelings to enhance and inform your vision and style while delving deeper into the emotions and nuances of your life, experiences, and surroundings, and how they coalesce into photographic imagery.

This workshop includes: artist lectures, group portfolio review for each participant, photoshoots with instructors, slide lectures, writing exercises, and group critiques. **Please note that this workshop includes a Pre-assignment prior to the workshop.

Participants can expect:

• A better/new understanding of what you’re drawn to photograph and more understanding as to how you make and shape your work.

• A better understanding as to how you speak and write about what you create

• Understanding and controlling the technical choices you make to shape your images

• Understanding the motifs you use within your work

Dawoud Bey, acclaimed photographer and educator in conversation with Sophie Landres, Curator, and Exhibitions Manager of The Dorsky Museum of Art in New Paltz. Open to the public, the event will be held in the Black Box Theater on Saturday evening.

View the full schedule of events for the Photography Residency here.

Learn more about Kaatsbaan Cultural Park and our accommodation here.

Join photographers David Hilliard and Elinor Carucci for a weekend of hands-on workshops, creative exploration, and community connection. Below is a preliminary schedule to give you a sense of what to expect. Events subject to change.

Friday, October 10, 2025

• 3pm-5pm: Welcome Meet & Greet + Student Portfolio Reviews

• 6pm: Dinner

• 7:30pm-9pm: David and Elinor present their work

Saturday, October 11, 2025

• 9am-11am: Presentation and critique of pre-assignment

• 11am-1pm: Writing artist statements

• 1pm-2pm: Lunch

• 2:30pm-4:30pm: Photoshoot on the grounds with David and Elinor

• 6pm: Dinner

• 7pm-8pm: Evening lecture with Dawoud Bey and Sophie Landres

• 8pm-9pm: Reception in the lobby

  NOTE: This incredible lecture and reception are included with Residency Passes. If you're not attending the residency - or if you're a participant with friends or family who’d like to join - click the event button below for details and tickets.

Sunday, October 12, 2025

• 9am-12pm: Independent work and writing time

• 12pm: Lunch

• 1pm-3pm: Final critique

We look forward to sharing this inspiring weekend with you.

David Hilliard

David Hilliard creates large-scale multi-paneled color photographs, often based on his life or the lives of people around him. His panoramas direct the viewer’s gaze across the image surface, allowing narrative, time, and space to unfold. David received his BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and MFA from the Yale University School of Art. He worked for many years as an assistant professor at Yale University, where he also directed the undergraduate photo department. He currently teaches in Boston at the Massachusetts College of Art & Design and Lesley Art + Design. He also leads photography workshops throughout the country. 

David exhibits his photographs both nationally and internationally, and has been the recipient of numerous awards such as the Fulbright Grant and Guggenheim Fellowship. His photographs can be found in many important collections including the Whitney Museum of American art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington , D.C.. His work is widely published and is represented by the Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York, Jackson Fine Art in Atlanta, and The Schoolhouse Gallery in Provincetown, MA.

Learn more at davidhilliard.com.

Elinor Carucci  

Elinor Carucci is an Israeli-American fine-art photographer. She earned a degree in photography from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in 1995 and moved to New York City the same year. From 1993 to 2006, she also worked as a professional Middle Eastern dancer.

Carucci’s work has been exhibited in solo and group shows internationally. Her solo exhibitions have been held at Edwynn Houk Gallery, Fifty One Fine Art Gallery, The Jewish Museum (NY), FoMU (Belgium), and Gagosian Gallery (London). Her work has also been included in group exhibitions at institutions such as The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, and The Photographers' Gallery in London.

Her photographs are in the collections of MoMA, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. Her editorial work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, and W.

Carucci has received the ICP Infinity Award (2001), a Guggenheim Fellowship (2002), and a NYFA grant (2010). She has published five books: Closer (Chronicle Books, 2002), Diary of a Dancer (SteidlMack, 2005), MOTHER (Prestel, 2013), Midlife (Monacelli Press/Phaidon, 2019) and The Collars of Ruth Bader Ginsburg: A Portrait of Justice (Clarkson Potter/Random House, 2023)

She teaches in the graduate program of Photography at the School of Visual Arts and at Hunter College Art Department, and is represented by Edwynn Houk Gallery in New York City.

Learn more at elinorcarucci.com.

Dawoud Bey

Groundbreaking artist and MacArthur Fellow Dawoud Bey examines the Black past and present. His photographs and film installations have been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the United States and Europe. Bey’s work has been the subject of numerous solo museum exhibitions, including Dawoud Bey: An American Project organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art (2020-2022), and Elegy at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (2023-2024) and New Orleans Museum of Art (2025-2026); and Dawoud Bey: Street Portraits at the Denver Art Museum (2024-2025). He has been the subject of several monographs, including Elegy (Aperture/VMFA, 2023), which chronicles Bey's history projects and landscape-based work. Bey is the recipient of numerous awards including five honorary doctorates, and in 2024, the artist was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

Bey lives and works in Chicago and New York. He is currently a Critic at Yale University, where he received his Masters in Fine Arts, and is Professor Emeritus at Columbia College, Chicago.

Learn more at skny.com/artists/dawoud-bey.

Sophie Landres

Sophie Landres is a curator and art historian, specializing in intermedia, critical theory, and contemporary art. She is the Curator and Exhibitions Manager of The Dorsky Museum of Art in New Paltz, NY and serves as an Arts Commissioner and member of the Public Art Committee for the City of Kingston, NY. Sophie has organized exhibitions, performances, and discursive events in New York, NY, Marfa, TX, and Miami, FL and taught at Columbia University, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, The New School, and New York University. Her writing has appeared in Art Basel Stories, Art Journal, The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, and PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art among other publications. Sophie holds a Ph.D. in Art History and Criticism from Stony Brook University, an M.F.A. in Art Criticism and Writing from the School of Visual Arts, and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Iowa. She is currently working on a series of essays about policing.

Learn more at newpaltz.edu/museum.

The mission of Kaatsbaan is to offer an extraordinary environment for cultural innovation and excellence by providing artists at any stage of their careers with creative residencies at state-of-the-art facilities, and presenting audiences and communities with annual festivals, educational programs, and seasonal events.

Located in the tranquility of the open countryside, Kaatsbaan Cultural Park is a 153-acre artist sanctuary located on New York’s Hudson River in the charming village of Tivoli. As an incubator for creativity and presenter of world-class artists in dance, theater, music, film, spoken and written word, and culinary and visual arts, Kaatsbaan provides artists with extraordinary studios, an indoor black box theater with a performance floor the size of the Metropolitan Opera, outdoor stages, housing at The Dancers’ Inn and Artist Gatehouse, and additional living space at the Artist Farmhouse. Our facilities make a breathtaking and idyllic country home for creative action and achievement.

ACCOMMODATIONS:
With 16 guest rooms, The Dancers’ Inn is nestled within our expansive 153-acre campus. The building provides motel-style accommodations with en suite bathrooms and bucolic views. Meals are served in our Artist Farmhouse, an early-20th-century house repurposed for dining, cooking, and serving.

For more info visit kaatsbaan.org/your-visit.