Building a Narrative through Street & Documentary Photography

One-day Workshop

Join professional photographer José Sarmento Matos for a workshop at the Bronx Documentary Center.

Learn how to control available light while shooting a story on an 8-picture of everyday life in NYC. José will work with the attendees on their photography skills to produce a coherent one-day series/story. The attendees will work on their exposure, framing, composition, editing, the ability to approach subjects in the street, and to return working on an 8-picture series.

Workshop Outline:
• One hour-and-a-half briefing on how to make a coherent photography series of 8 images. José will discuss framing, how to anticipate a decisive moment, how to photograph/compose according to the available light in one location, and how to use of light and use of reflections.

• José will talk about a few of his most recent photography series and his documentary work, and draw a parallel between the two.

• One hour will be spent discussing the attendees’ work, their perspectives, and challenges - (the attendees are asked to bring a 5-photo selection with a documentary or street photography theme that they have worked on before, and a list of 5 things that they find challenging in their photography).

• 3 hours outdoor shooting.

• Return to base at the Bronx Documentary Center.

• Group editing session. JSM will help each attendee deliver a final 8 photo story. The whole group will participate and discuss this process.

About the Instructor:
long-term
José Sarmento Matos is a 35-year-old Portuguese documentary photographer. He is currently based between London and Lisbon. Sarmento Matos focuses his work on medium/long-term projects on themes related to identity and social inequality. He has published his work in media outlets such as The New York Times, New Yorker, Newsweek, Washington Post, among others, he also collaborates with Bloomberg, Le Monde, HBO and HISTORY.

After receiving an emergency grant from the National Geographic Society to work on a collaboration with the Jamaica community, in Seixal, on racial and housing inequality in times of pandemic, JSM produced a film - JAMAIKA - shown at Doc Lisboa 2021 and exhibited in an exhibition at MAAT, in the same year.

In 2024, after 3 and a half years of accompanying families from Bairro da Jamaica in their struggle for decent housing, José published the book JAMAIKA which tells the story of the community, serving as a memory of these families, also telling the process of rehousing the families and the demolition of the neighbourhood.

In 2014 JSM completed his master's degree in documentary photography and photojournalism at the London College of Communication, where he taught documentary photography between 2016 and 2021. In 2015, JSM was considered by Magnum Photos as one of the 30 best photographers in the world under 30, with his work “The Turn of the Page”. And in 2020, with the project “Where do I belong? Abandoning the Venezuelan Dream.”, won the Estação Imagem award.