HOW TO SHOOT (WOMEN, FEMME, BADDIES)

THE GAZE & THE FRAME

Photographing with Consent, Myth, and Intention,

FRIDAY AUGUST 29, 2025 12-6PM

The camera isn’t innocent. It’s a mirror, sometimes a weapon, always a myth-making machine.

This workshop interrogates what it means to photograph with models today—with an awareness of historical power dynamics, aesthetic codes, and collaborative image-making.

Led by avant-garde photographer, lens-based artist and publisher Bil Brown, The Gaze & The Frame invites photographers, artists, and cultural workers into a critical and practical rethinking of the model-photographer relationship.

We’ll move from discussion into direct experience: shooting with working models, reframing old ideas of “the muse,” and engaging with ethical, intentional practices of visual authorship. 

The Saturday session photographs will be collected and the best will be selected for a group zine, that will be available in weeks prior and potential pop-up.

What to Expect

• Lecture and visual history talk

• Model panel with open discussion

• Collaborative shooting sessions

• Guided feedback and critique

• Optional 1:1 mentorship and creative direction

• Frameworks for consent-based, culturally-aware image-making

• Opportunity to participate in a post-event zine or pop-up exhibition

FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS: CHOOSE THE TIER BEST FOR YOU!

You may want to participate with the group shoot, or maybe one on one with a model, or you may want specific attention and have the full experience of day. Pick your own path.

YOUR INSTRUCTOR

“TEACHING MUST BE AN EXPERIENCE TAUGHT BY THOSE WHO HAVE EXPERIENCED. THERE IS NO OTHER WAY.” – BIL BROWN

Whether working in portraiture, fashion, experimental work or diaristic photo essays, Bil Brown’s visionary imagery captures highly energetic moments and extremities of the conscious world, or the foreboding of prescience — of what is to come. Often using his work as a platform for advanced ideas, social-change, and excising historical reference addressing current events, Brown pushes the boundaries of his visual storytelling as a “concrete-poetry” infused with empathy for our current cultural milieu. Bil’s work excels in long-form essays, exhibitions, books and prints exploring a single subject or theme. Maintaining a recognizable voice across all media. Oft an editorial contributor to magazines and periodicals such as FLAUNT, PURPLE FASHION MAGAZINE, AUTRE, INTERVIEW, SCHON DETAILS, PAPER, The Sunday Times (UK), Le Monde (FR), Mala Fronta DNES (CZ), and founding editor and publisher of Black & Grey magazine. Bil also is the founder and president of the creative agency NINESIXTYNINE, and is often a presenter for LEICA AKADAMIE worldwide.

Bil’s still photography has been exhibited in numerous group and solo shows. His 2018 show at the Leica Gallery LA, in conjunction with the estate of the late Jim Marshall, PROTEST, vehemently documented the 2016-2017 protests following the election of an American President. In 2020, during the global pandemic, Bil started a teaching series with Leica Akademie entitled Fragments Toward the History of Photography. In 2021, Bil’s series MYLAR was made into NFTs and held gallery shows at two galleries in Vienna, Austria and now for the first time is at Tamarkin Camera in Chicago July-September, 2025!