Crafting a Compelling Narrative through Memory
with Heather Evans Smith
April 21 – May 12, 2026
Course Description
Memory is layered, imperfect, and deeply visual, making it a powerful foundation for photographic storytelling. In this new online workshop, you work with photographer Heather Evans Smith to explore photographic storytelling through the lens of memory. Drawing from her own practice, Heather guides you through how personal history, objects, and metaphor can shape images that feel layered, thoughtful, and emotionally resonant.
Over the course of four weekly sessions, you approach memory from a different angle each week, using photography as a way to reflect, reinterpret, and build narrative. Through guided assignments, you experiment with still life and portrait photography, work with heirlooms and found photographs, and explore how metaphor can function as a storytelling tool. Heather shares insight into her creative process, discussing how she uses symbolism, staging, and visual cues to transform memory into image.
Each session includes time for student work review, group discussion, and Q&A with Heather, creating space to share progress, receive feedback, and learn from one another. The workshop emphasizes process over perfection, encouraging you to develop ideas over time and build connections between concept and image.
By the end of the workshop, you leave with new approaches to visual storytelling, a deeper understanding of how memory can inform photographic work, and a stronger foundation for continuing to develop meaningful, personal narratives.
Additional Information
WHO SHOULD ATTEND:
What You Should Know:
Participants need to be technically self-sufficient, as this is not a workshop to learn how to use your gear or editing software. Participants must be able to download, select, and submit images for class each day.
Special Notes:
Class will meet 9:30 am – 12:00 pm (Mountain Time) on Tuesdays starting April 21 and ending May 12 (four online group sessions). Enrollment is limited to 12 participants.
Zoom Video Conferencing software (available for no charge from Zoom.com) will be used to facilitate the class sessions. Further details will be emailed to registrants.
Santa Fe Workshops always aims to produce a high-quality experience for our online attendees. That said, variables including regional and local internet provider speeds, traffic on Zoom's servers, and your own computing hardware can contribute to a less than ideal streaming event. While we do our best to minimize the impact of these variables, they are outside the control of Santa Fe Workshops.
Policies:
View Withdrawal and Transfer Policies for online programs.
For the convenience of participants, recordings of each class session are posted privately for one month after the end of each session. Santa Fe Workshops takes the recordings down after one month to protect the intellectual property of our instructors.
about
Heather Evans Smith is a North Carolina photo-based artist whose work reflects her southern roots, motherhood, womanhood, and a whimsical imagination she relied on as an only child in a rural town. Her photographic imagery explores the ideas of memory, loss, and family in conceptual settings.
Heather’s work has been exhibited in both solo and group exhibitions at venues including the Fox Talbot Museum in Lacock, England, the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, NC, and Leica Galerie Milano in Milan, Italy. She is a Critical Mass 2014, 2018, 2021, and 2024 Top 50 recipient, 2022 Silver List artist and the CENTER 2022 Me&Eve grant recipient. Her first monograph, “Seen Not Heard,” was published by Flash Powder Projects in 2016 followed by two self-published monographs, “Alterations” and “Blue.”
Website: heatherevanssmith.com
Instagram: @heatherevanssmith
