Photography and Art: Building Bridges

Photography has long been seen as a mirror of reality—a tool to capture what is. Art, on the other hand, often reaches toward the abstract, the symbolic, the imagined. But what happens when we dissolve that boundary? When photography stops documenting and starts dreaming? When the lens becomes a brush, and the image becomes not just visual evidence, but expression?

In this new online program with artist Valda Bailey, she explores that in-between space—where photography becomes more than a record and enters into a dialogue with painting, abstraction, and storytelling. Spanning two Saturdays in October, Valda discusses blending visual languages, subverting expectations, and creating work that challenges the separation between what is real and what we feel. This is not just about technique, although she covers it, but she focuses mainly on intention. About asking: What if? Can a photograph mean something beyond what it shows? How can it hold memory, metaphor, atmosphere—or even silence? And how can we, as artists, push the photographic medium toward new forms of expression?

Join Valda online as she unravels, dissects, and reveals her current thoughts and ideas on the process of making art, being a creative being, and its benefits in a chaotic world.