Who We Are
Eyewitness Collective grew out of years Ethan and Laurin spent photographing, teaching, and traveling together. Again and again, they met photographers looking for the same things: honest feedback, thoughtful peers, and a reason to keep making work. This is the place they built for that.
What We Do
We run small-group field workshops, online critiques, assignments, and conversations about editing, access, ethics, and the practical side of sustaining a documentary practice.
Our Approach
We take the work seriously without making the room intimidating. Feedback is direct and useful. Questions are welcome. The point is to help each photographer make clearer decisions—and then go back out and make the next picture.
Who This Community Is For
For people early in their practice, working professionals, and anyone in between who wants to learn, share work, and stay accountable.
Our Founders
Ethan Swope and Laurin Stréle met through photography. After years of assignments and teaching, they wanted a place with less posturing and more useful conversation. Eyewitness Collective is that place.
Ethan Swope
Ethan Swope is a photojournalist and documentary cinematographer. His work has been published by The New York Times, National Geographic, AP, Getty Images, Bloomberg, and others. He has covered wildfires, political movements, and conflicts around the world. In workshops, he focuses on access, ethics, editing, and building a story under real conditions.
Laurin Stréle
Laurin Stréle is a documentary and travel photographer whose assignments have taken him across Europe, Africa, and Latin America. His work centers on people and place. He has also led workshops for years, helping photographers build trust with subjects and turn individual frames into a coherent body of work.
Together
They teach side by side, in small groups, with most of the time spent photographing and editing—not sitting in a classroom.
Roberto Flores
Co-founder
Mexican documentary photographer working worldwide on stories at the intersection of culture, traditions and people.
Contact us
Questions about a workshop, membership, or the Collective? Send us a note and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.
Different perspectives. A shared commitment.
Eyewitness Collective brings documentary photographers together through field workshops, mentoring, exhibitions, competitions and collaborative projects.
- Fieldwork
- Mentorship
- Collaboration
- Responsibility
- Long-form stories
Photography begins with how we look.
We created Eyewitness to make space for serious documentary practice: patient, collaborative and accountable to the people in the frame.
The collective is built around shared field experience and a belief that photographers grow faster when the work can be discussed honestly.
Our programmes connect practical fieldwork with editing, ethics, captions, sequencing and the long process of turning photographs into stories.
Working photographers. Direct guidance.
Laurin Strele
Laurin is a documentary photographer and educator whose work moves through conflict, culture and the long consequences of political change. He brings sustained field experience to workshops, editing and project development.
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Ethan Swope
Ethan is a photojournalist and mentor focused on human consequence, access and the decisions that turn individual frames into a purposeful documentary narrative.
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Roberto Flores
Roberto is a documentary photographer and mentor whose people-first practice informs his approach to fieldwork, critique and the patient development of long-form stories.
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Standards carried into every programme.
Access is earned. Context matters. Editing is part of the ethics of the work.
Bring us a place, a project or an idea.
We work with photographers, institutions and partners on workshops, talks, exhibitions and documentary projects.