Meeting This Moment with Photography
An Eight-Week Collaborative Workshop with Ruddy Roye and Mary Beth Meehan
6:30–9:00 pm Eastern via Zoom
Eight Tuesdays beginning October 7, 2025. Class may skip some weeks to allow for more time for shooting. Schedule to be worked out among participants.
Course type: Discussion, shooting, critique.
Level: Must be familiar with use of camera and passionate about engaging in this moment in history
Course fee: $775
Scholarship available
Option to pay 25% deposit now with balance due one week before course starts.
Photo by Ruddy Roye
Class Description
We are living through a time of extraordinary upheaval—fractured communities, eroding trust, and deep social and political polarization. In a landscape dominated by superficial content and algorithm-driven imagery, how can photographers create honest narrative work that provides clarity and insight into how it feels and what it means to be living in the United States today?
Meeting This Moment with Photography is an 8-week online course designed to help photographers develop visual storytelling projects that address the emotional and social landscape of the United States (and the broader world) in this tumultuous moment. Led by acclaimed photographers Ruddy Roye and Mary Beth Meehan, this course brings together a community of photographers committed to creating powerful, authentic imagery that speaks to the realities of our time.
Participants will engage in weekly group sessions that include brainstorming, project development, peer critique, and guided feedback from the instructors. By the end of the course, each participant will have created a cohesive set of images that speaks to this complex, historic moment.
In addition, these finished projects will be considered for publication in a dedicated section of SDN’s website focusing on this moment in history both by photographers enrolled in this class and also from the wider SDN community.
Who it’s for:
Photographers with a working knowledge of visual storytelling who are ready to dig deeply—both into their own photographic process as well as into the existential angst of the country.
Course Highlights:
Ruddy Roye
Ruddy Roye is a documentary photographer specializing in editorial and environmental portraits, and photo-journalism. He is inspired by the raw and gritty lives of grass-roots people, especially those of his homeland of Jamaica. Roye strives to tell the stories of their victories and ills by bringing their voices to social media and the matte-fiber paper.
Roye has worked with magazines such as National Geographic, TIME, New York Times, Vogue, Jet, Ebony, ESPN and Essence and has also worked with local newspapers such as New York Newsday. He has honed his skill as a photojournalist by working as an Associated Press stringer in New York covering journalism events. He is also known for his documentation of the dancehall scene all over the world. He has travelled to as far as Brazzaville in the Congo to document how Jamaicans and other dancers use the language of dance as a tool of activism.
Roye has also been instrumental in leading the Instagram charge as a photographer showcasing his interest in Bed-Stuy and Brooklyn as a whole. The images he portrays in his “Black Portraiture” or “When Living is a Protest” series have been the talking point of numerous forums on Instagram. He was asked to take over TIME and the New Yorker Instagram feeds. Since then, Roye has taught at New York University, the School of Visual Arts, and was also an adjunct lecturer at Columbia University; engaging in conversations with photography students on the rise of Instagram and the changing face of photojournalism.
Roye's work is widely sought after for exhibitions all over the world. He has been featured at the Steven Kasher Gallery and on the New York Times Lens Blog.
Mary Beth Meehan
Mary Beth Meehan is a photographer, writer, and educator who uses images, text, exhibitions, and public installations to bring people together in the search for common ground. Her portraiture and community collaborations have challenged dominant narratives across racial, cultural, and social boundaries, addressing often fraught public dialogue with powerful imagery, personal backstories and tender archival material that lend an essential layer of humanity, insight, and care. Trained as a photojournalist, Meehan reckons with the limits of photography and yet continually sees the potential of visual art to help us uncover our social conditioning and unlock a path to greater understanding. Meehan has held artist residencies at Stanford University, Brown University, the University of West Georgia, and the University of Missouri School of Journalism, and has lectured at the School of Visual Arts, the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and the Missouri Photo Workshop. Meehan’s work has been featured and reviewed in publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Review of Books and Le Monde. A native of Brockton, Massachusetts, Mary Beth received a Master of Arts Degree in photojournalism at the University of Missouri, Columbia. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
Payment and Cancellation Policies
