Workshop 3. Black and white photography: The light in the urban landscape
Teacher: Mehmet Kismet (Istanbul, Turkey)
The workshop will focus on ways of capturing the light and tones (from black to white) in B&W photography. Streets are the scene of moving- or still-lives. Besides catching the “decisive moment”, the photographer expresses him/herself by reflecting the elements of life in his or her individual way. This may lead us to use some abstractions of the street elements, imagined or brought in front of our vision by real life itself. Working with such elements and learning to view them with a critical photographer’s eye will be the focus of the study in the workshop.
Apart of shooting sessions in or around the town of Ludza, the workshop will include evaluations of the participants’ works and discussions on many complementary theoretical and philosophical topics of photography.
Requirements/technique: Analogue camera, good knowledge of the technical camera aspects. Darkroom experience is neccessary. Those participants who already have a portfolio are encouraged to take them along.
Mehmet Kismet was born in 1952 in Turkey and has been actively involved in national photography schene from very joung age. The documentary works produced by “FOG Group” (1983-1990) that he formed with some photographer friends made an important qualitative and conceptual impact on Turkish photography. In 2003, he created the “Centre for Photography in Istanbul”, now among the world’s famous Leica Galleries. Besides the social-themed projects and documentaries of Istanbul’s urban life, Kismet’s photographic subjects have been spread out on a larger territory, comprising different elements of a certain “photographic emotion”, as he puts it.
Mehmet Kismet is a member of the council of the first photography museum in Turkey. His photographs found their place within the permanent collection of the Istanbul Modern Art Museum as well as private collections in Istanbul, Paris, Frankfurt and New York. He taught photography courses at Istanbul Yilidiz University, as well as at the Centre for Photography in Istanbul.
Kismet’s exibition DISTILLATION at Istanbul centre of photography, 2008