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A COLLABORATION WITH GESCHE WÜRFEL


HOW TO START, ORGANIZE, AND FINISH A LONG-TERM PROJECT

with Gesche Würfel & Holger Thoss

©Gesche Würfel

Last year, I met artist Gesche Würfel and her exhibit on The Absence and Presence of the Berlin Wall. This long-term project combines three bodies of work, offering multiple perspectives on the Wall.

My curiosity about how she structures such a large project inspired us both to offer a workshop that will help photographers organize their own long-term projects.

This workshop will introduce this process and make it a manageable practice. 

A personal project helps you develop and refine your unique style. It encourages careful curation of your work and sharpens your skills in creating a successful series. These elements are key to setting yourself apart from other photographers and attracting potential commissions or clients. 

Whether you are preparing images for your website, portfolio, or book, this workshop teaches you the fundamentals and techniques to refine your personal project.  

©Holger Thoss

We offer an excellent opportunity to gain knowledge typically accessible only to full-time students. You can kickstart your own long-term project to develop and grow as a photographer.




How to start, organize, and finish a Long-term Project

2-day Workshop


with Gesche Würfel and Holger Thoss
February 10 + 11, 2026
Hours: 9 am – 6 pm
Location: Holger’s studio, Brooklyn
Max. number of participants: 12
Fee: $1,250

The fee covers:
  • two Zoom sessions (before and after the workshop) 
  • in-person workshop instruction on two days,
    breakfast, tea/coffee, snacks

Sign-up deadline: January 15, 2026
Group Zoom: January 27, 2026

This workshop is for photographers who are seriously working on long-term projects.

A personal project helps you develop and refine your unique style. It encourages careful curation of your work and sharpens your skills in creating a successful series. These elements are key to distinguishing yourself from other photographers and attracting potential commissions or clients.

Whether you are preparing images for your website, portfolio, or book, this workshop teaches you the fundamentals and techniques to refine your personal project.

All camera formats and photographic processes are welcome.

You will receive advice from two experienced photographers on refining your photo project and style. This includes support with editing, sequencing, and writing, helping you identify what issues/images may still need to be addressed in your photographic projects. The workshop consists of discussions and hands-on practical sessions to further develop your project ideas. We will also discuss publication and exhibition goals. By participating in this workshop, you automatically gain access to a peer community for feedback.


Prep/Post Work


Two weeks before the workshop, the group will meet on Zoom. You will learn about the course leaders and the workshop program. Your homework is to make a tight edit of one personal project that you would like to work on during the workshop. Prepare a presentation with 30-50 images, and bring more for editing.

2-hour Zoom group meeting after the workshop, Wednesday, March 11, 2026 (time tbc)
(each participant presents for 10 minutes)


If there’s sufficient interest, we will host a follow-up workshop in the late spring/early summer.


Course Level / Prerequisite


Advanced: You are comfortable with your camera, whether film or digital, and with your photographic practice. You have already produced or are working on a body of work. You are proficient with Adobe applications, including Photoshop and Lightroom. You understand printing or portfolio revision processes. You may be seeking ways to strengthen your work through sequencing, theoretical readings, and group critiques.


Gesche Würfel is a visual artist based in New York City and has taught as a professor at NYU Tisch School of the Arts and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for ten years. She holds an MFA in Studio Art from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (USA), an MA in Photography and Urban Cultures from Goldsmiths, University of London (UK), and a Diploma in Spatial Planning from the Technical University Dortmund (Germany).
Her work has been exhibited, published, and awarded internationally; exhibition venues include Tate Modern, London (UK), Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (D), David Zwirner, New York (USA), Contemporary Art Museum (CAM) Raleigh, NC (USA); Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC (USA); Goldsmiths Center for Contemporary Art, London (UK). 
Würfel is the author of The Absence and Presence of the Berlin Wall (DISTANZ, 2025) and Basement Sanctuaries (Schilt Publishing, 2014). Her work has been published in The New York Times, Brooklyn Rail, Tagesspiegel, The Guardian, WIRED, Slate, and many other outlets. She is a recipient of grants from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Federal Foundation for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Eastern Germany, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC), among others. Collecting institutions are the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Museum, MA (USA), the Portland Museum of Art, OR (USA), the Pensacola Museum of Art, FL (USA), and the Washington and Lee University, VA (USA). Würfel is represented by Tracey Morgan Gallery.


Holger Thoss is a Brooklyn-based photographer with a German accent whose work spans more than thirty years of fine art and documentary photography. He came to the United States as a Work Scholar at Aperture before completing his training at the International Center of Photography. He later ran the darkroom at Magnum Photos, working under photographers such as Gilles Peress, James Nachtwey, Susan Meiselas, and Elliott Erwitt.

Thoss’s practice includes immersive series such as Surrender, which documents weddings as universal rituals, and Progeny, panoramic narratives that distill the daily chaos of family life into a single frame.

His work has been exhibited internationally, including recent shows at Deutsches Haus at NYU (Wilkenroth Landscapes) and WALK, a long-term documentary project at the Düsseldorf+ Photo Biennale 2024. Thoss is a co-founder of Ritual Collective, an organization that reframes photographs taken at weddings as platforms for artistic inquiry into human relationships and celebration. His work has appeared in publications such as Vogue, Harper’s BAZAAR, InStyle, and New York Magazine.

Thoss’s practice encompasses collaborative image-making, bookmaking, and a philosophy of attentive seeing inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein’s maxim “Don’t Think! Look!” This attention to intuition, trust, and intimacy appears throughout his work as a sustained commitment to photographing the rituals and relationships that shape everyday life.