HOLLYWOOD/POETICS OF THE BLVD •A STREET PHOTO WORKSHOP
SEPTEMBER 6. 2025
The Camera is Not Passive–It Is A Weapon, A Mirror, A Ritual.
A Workshop with Bil Brown
The streets of hollywood. This is not your typical street photography workshop.
A one-day, immersive photography workshop led by Bil Brown. Explore the legacy and ethics of street photography and beyond
Los Angeles, SATURDAY SEPT 6, 2025 9-6PM
This is Hollywood / Poetics of the Blvd—a full-day immersive experience where we confront the myth, decay, and masquerade of Los Angeles’ most photographed and least understood street.
From Vine to Highland, from the Walk of Fame to the alley behind Musso & Frank’s—Hollywood Boulevard isn’t just a location, it’s a hallucination. A collapsing dream. A stage. A hunting ground for archetypes and masks.
This workshop is about more than framing a decisive moment.
It’s about seeing what’s trying not to be seen—and learning how to photograph that rupture.
A STATEMENT OF VISION
They keep calling it street photography-but the street is gone. Look to our immediate past: This is POST-STREET
What You’ll Learn:
If we are out there, I'm guiding you, we have assignments. You will learn something (ask anyone that has taken a class from me).
How to read atmosphere like light
Building myth through frame & motion
Approaching strangers as if in dream
Shooting ethically, and ecstatically
On-street feedback + mini editing session (Lightroom/C1)
Setting your camera to get it out of the way
You don't have to have a Leica
Includes:
One-on-one feedback with Bil and a group critique
A PDF workbook
Post-workshop group review (virtual or in person)
Access to the private online community for ongoing critique & support (forthcoming)
To say we all have a vision is true —but few of us are taught how to see it, let alone notice it. That's what this workshop is for.
Whether you're carrying a Leica or a cracked iPhone, this is about unlocking the poetic, the mythic, the haunted fragments of the world around you. Not just street photography. Not just documentation. This is magic.
3-5 mythic images with narrative gravitas
PDF: "Poetic Image Checklist"
Access to post-workshop Zoom share + critique
Peer group invite for future image rituals
Who It’s For:
Photographers, poets with cameras, image-makers hungry for depth.
No matter your experience, this workshop will challenge how you move, how you see, and how you become the street.
Price: $350
Only 8 total participants. This will fill fast.
Bil Brown
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!