This intense five-day course with Klavdij Sluban will focus on the city of Arles and around till Mediterranean coast bathed in the gentle light of spring, inexorably coming alive with the season’s first festivities.

An exciting one-day road, rail and sea trip will immerse participants in vast, wild, natural spaces dominated by the horizon but also steeped in the atmosphere of closed, confined places punctuated by human activities.

This photographic experience will be resolutely turned towards the outdoor spaces and the lives around us. The second part will concentrate on exploring inner, more personal territories.

Participants will be asked to draw upon themselves and find common ground with the spaces and situations they encounter, which will inevitably involve paying attention to their sensations and feelings. This step is necessary to accompany each person’s sensitivity, which will determine the distance, obsessions and detours.

This approach will help to define a unique perspective when there is profusion, abundance and a thousand things to capture, but also when there is almost nothing but the surrounding emptiness, when everything seems to have vanished.

Through daily editing, individual and collective exchanges and reflections, participants will find their own vocabulary and develop their photographic writing.

The last step will be the finalization of a personal series that will lead to the creation of a slide show relying especially on an experienced assistant during the editing process.  The editing will be tightened up, acquire meaning, convey the sensations experienced and find the right form and pace. Each project will be screened in public on the last evening of the workshop.


KLAVDIJ SLUBAN
Klavdij Sluban combines photography and travel, working worldwide. A winner of the 2000 Prix Niepce and the 2004 Prix Leica, his photographs are shown in the world’s most prestigious institutions, including the Finnish Museum of Photography in Helsinki, Musée des Beaux-arts de Canton, Estonia National Museum, Central American Photography Festival in Costa Rica and Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris. His many books include Entre Parenthèses, Photo Poche, (Actes Sud) and Balkans Transit (Seuil). For 10 years, he has led workshops for teens at the Fleury-Mérogis juvenile detention center. In 2000, he created a photo workshop in Celje, Slovenia, at the country’s only prison for young offenders, as well as in Krusevac and Valjevo, Serbia.
www.sluban.com