Title: Still Life…Tells Moving Stories  
Artform: Digital photo of a still life  

Goal/Objective 

Capturing community members’ stories through a table landscape  

Studio Work 

Ordinary objects can be laden with memory. Participants are asked to capture women’s stories through a photo shoot with a woman they have selected. Before the interview, each is asked to select three to five objects reflecting key moments or values in their lives. Together they create a table landscape with the selected objects that are photographed, along with the subject in a series of cell phone portraits. 

Barbara Rosenblit and Sheila Miller wrote a version of this workshop for the Jewish Grandparents Network for use with tweens and teens, available at: https://jewishgrandparentsnetwork.org/family-room/still-life-tells-moving-stories-a-grandparent-grandchild-photography-experience/  

Materials 

• Cell phone camera 
• Printer photographic paper 
• Matting materials and/or frames 

Inspiration 

Photographs from the series “My Favorite Things” from the Wall Street Journal  

Sheila Myer Miller and Barbara Ellison Rosenblit, Pentimento: Revealing Women’s Stories 

Exhibition 

These portraits can be framed and exhibited on a wall. The Artist Statements can hang alongside the portraits in the gallery or be laminated and placed together in a clear book holder near the photographs. 

At the opening, participants reflect on their finished portraits and the objects that define them.