Thinking Through Making: Charlie Engman's Circular Process

Photographer, director, and art director Charlie Engman embraces an entangled view of artistic practice, looping between intuition, intention, and structure.

How do ideas become images, and how can images give form to new ideas? In Charlie Engman's process, photographs are not final outputs – they are much rather thinking tools, active spaces where concepts emerge. This methodology directly resonates with his primary artistic inquiry: the emotional, social, and cultural agency of images – not static representations, but engines that shape and change things.

Open and unresolved thoughts, instinctive and non-linear processes are the raw matter nurturing IDEA, PhMuseum’s Online Masterclass On Conceptual Thinking, which will be led by Charlie Engman from October 2026 to May 2027. Within an eight-month framework of collective reflection, testing and unplanned discovery, Engman will guide artists in refining their concepts into solid visual projects, while interrogating images, their tensions, and the way they live in our contemporary world.

With the Masterclass now accepting applications, we invited Engman to deepen in his artistic philosophy and teaching strategy, which puts participants and their specific contexts at its centre.

Ciao Charlie, you will lead the second edition of IDEA, where participants will explore the initial phase of a project. How do you usually approach that stage in your work, and how do you envision guiding them through it?

The early phase of a project is usually messy and unresolved. I tend to begin with something I am fixated on, an image, a feeling, or a contradiction, and test it across different forms. I try to avoid locking into a single idea too quickly and allow the project to shift.

With participants, I want to help them stay with that uncertainty while also giving them tools to shape and refine their ideas. The goal is to move from something intuitive toward something intentional and structured, without losing complexity.

What is the relationship between thinking and making, concepts and images in your practice?

For me, thinking and making are inseparable. I don’t begin with a fully formed concept to illustrate, nor do I simply produce images and reflect afterward. The concept emerges through the process of making, through testing, repetition, and unexpected results. Images are not just outcomes but tools for thinking. They allow ideas to take form, to be challenged or complicated. The work develops through a feedback loop between intuition and analysis, idea and execution. I see my practice as a way of clarifying this entanglement.

I often think about a Philip Guston quote in this respect: “When you start working, everybody is in your studio… But as you continue, they start leaving, one by one… Then, if you are lucky, even you leave.”

From photographs of your mother in MOM, to internet imagery in Hello Chaos, a Love Story and AI-generated pictures in Cursed, you are keen to study and play with the way images live in our culture and imagination. What are your latest reflections or curiosities on this matter?

I’ve been thinking about how images do not just represent the world, but actively participate in shaping it, especially now that they can be generated without direct reference to reality. With AI, images feel less like documents and more like propositions. At the same time, they retain emotional weight and familiarity, creating a tension.

I’m interested in that gap between what an image shows, suggests, and makes us feel, and how it is expanding in contemporary visual culture. Across these projects, I’m also interested in the tension between personal, embodied experience and its translation into more generalized or public forms.

Your projects employ photography, fashion, writing, found images, AI. How do you move through these mediums, and what ties them together in your work?

I move between mediums based on what an idea requires rather than committing to a single form. One of the central inquiries of my work concerns how value systems are established and maintained, so I try to remain attentive to my own habits of making, both relying on and questioning them.

What ties the work together is a consistent set of questions around how images function socially, emotionally, and culturally. Whether in fashion, writing, or AI, I’m interested in how images construct identity, circulate within systems of value, and shape our sense of self. The medium shifts, but the inquiry remains stable.

What is the role of the internet and technology in your work? Do new tools like AI introduce new responsibilities?

The internet and digital technologies are not just tools in my work; they are the environment in which images exist and acquire meaning. AI makes this more explicit by revealing how images are constructed from existing visual culture.

I see these tools as intensifying existing responsibilities. Questions of authorship, appropriation, labor, and representation are amplified. As both an artist and a teacher, I think it is important to engage these tools critically rather than simply adopting or rejecting them.

Why are you drawn to teaching, and how would you describe your approach?

I’m drawn to teaching because it creates a space for collective thinking. It allows me to articulate my own process while encountering different ways of working.

My approach is less about giving answers and more about asking the right questions, helping people clarify what they are trying to do and why. A large part of my teaching involves describing, without judgment, what I see in a participant’s work. This can unlock latent meaning or potential. I aim to offer language and tools that help participants understand their work from both the inside and the outside, balancing support with challenge.

Who do you think could benefit from this program, and why?

I take a participant-centered, context-specific approach, so a wide range of people can benefit, whether they are at the beginning, middle, or later stages of a project.

It is especially useful for those who have an idea or unresolved body of work but are unsure how to develop it into a coherent project. It is for people who want to refine a voice and move beyond individual images toward systems, concepts, and bodies of work. It is also well suited to those open to questioning their assumptions and pushing their practice in new directions.

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IDEA Online Masterclass On Conceptual Thinking is part of PhMuseum's educational program, comprising five different masterclasses that will all share a single intake period running until 28 May, with classes beginning in October 2026 and ending in May 2027. Alternating collective tutoring, seminars, individual sessions, and studio visits, each masterclass exists in a community-driven environment, while providing concrete opportunities to exhibit, publish and distribute your work.

You can take part in one or more programs. Check them out phmuseum.com/m26

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Scholarships and participation fee

Before 30 April – If you apply by this date, you are eligible for the full scholarship. In your motivational letter, explain why you’d be a strong candidate, and how you would benefit from this support.

Before 30 April – If you apply by this date, you can save €350. All applications will be automatically eligible for the Early Bird Fee of €1,850.

Before 28 May – If you apply by this date, you can join the program by paying the Regular Fee of €2,200. Since applications will be reviewed on a continuous basis, early submissions receive priority for seat allocation.

If you are offered a place, PhMuseum is happy to write you a supporting letter when you try to secure any external funding opportunities. In previous editions of our masterclasses program, the candidates' fees were covered thanks to the generous contribution of the IWMF Howard G. Buffett Fund for Women Journalists, Mondriaan Fonds, Arts Council Malta, and other programs. Read our guide to 2026 Education Funding for Visual Artists to discover opportunities.