Photography is the result of personal choices relating both to content – subject, intention, point of view, etc. – and to form: format, distance, timing, composition, lighting, etc. Necessarily subjective, these choices are reflected in the specificity and personality of the work of each individual photographer. So this workshop will concentrate on the photographic choices to be made by each participant.
Photography is also a matter of ways of seeing. By taking the time to look carefully, and really see, each participant will work on his sense of observation and his visual curiosity and instinct.
The emphasis of the workshop will hinge on the above choices and notions of seeing.
Picture-taking sessions in different settings – town, factories, farms, abattoirs, seashore, etc – will alternate with photography exercises. The former are intended to guide each participant gradually towards his own world, while the latter will help him or her shake off the constraints – bad habits, technical shortcomings, etc – that prevent the work from evolving freely.
The idea, then, is to direct each participant towards an unimpeded personal approach – rather than a conventional or predefined one – in terms both of ideas and form.
OLIVIER CULMANN
A member of the Tendance Floue collective, Olivier Culmann works mainly for the press (L'Express, Le Monde, Geo, etc) and for the last few years has been regularly running workshops in France, Morocco, the United States, Nigeria and elsewhere.
His books include Les mondes de l’école, in association with photographer Mat Jacob (Editions Marval) and his many distinctions include the Villa Médicis Hors les Murs (1997), the Scam Roger Pic Award (2003), the Fujifilm Euro Press Photo Award (2004) and the World Press Photo Award (2008).
www.tendancefloue.net
WORKSHOP CONTENT :
- Presentation of the workshop coordinator's personal work
- Presentation of participants' earlier work
- Daily photo sessions in different settings – towns, factories, farms, abattoirs, seashore, hospitals, barracks, etc
- Photography exercises involving constraints of time, place, subject etc
- Analysis and criticism of the resultant images. These sessions may be collective or individual
- Consideration of each participant's photographic world
-Final one-to-one interview
BRING :
- Photographs, portfolio, press book, etc., indicative of your level.
- Film and/or digital cameras : note that given the processing times required, view cameras and black and white film are excluded. (Films are not provided)
-Participants working with digital material can bring a memory stick, external hard drive and/or a laptop computer for storing their images.
