Masters & workshops 2011

Personal documentary: Interior
By Michael Ackerman

During the workshop, the students will be learning to use photography (or a combination of mediums) in order to explore and express what is truly meaningful to themselves - their own attitude about what it means to be alive in this world, their own vision. 

Using the surroundings in Kuldīga and the camp, the participants will be asked to find something, someone, or someplace that speaks to them in a unique and personal way. They will return to it repeatedly during the workshop to make a succession of images portraying both the subject and their own relationship with it. Throughout the process, they will be encouraged to shed preexisting or imposed rules about what it means to be a good photographer, to dig deep in an attempt to get closer to their own needs and beliefs.

If already engaged in something, the students should bring that material with them. In this case, the work at ISSP will focus on taking that further. The teacher will share his approach to photography along with showing projects and short films by others that have been inspirational for him personally and that approach photographic documentary in diverse ways.

© Michael Ackerman, Warsaw, 2009

Kuldīga in Pop Latino
By Marcos Lopez

A colorful experiment with an aim to create a unique artistic representation of the ISSP host town Kuldīga, together with the father of Latin American “Pop-Latino” style Marcos Lopez.

The participants will learn about Lopez’ distinctive method of combining photographic realism and theatrical staging, with crossing influences from painting, cinema, traditional and modern archetypes, and digital art. The teacher will share lots of practical tips on creative mise-en-scene and staged portrait in photography – from sketches, drawings, to casting, choice of location, and filming - and discuss about the many ways of representing specific reality in a free and discursive way. He will also present several photographers and painters, from classicism to contemporary art, to give the participants food for thought.

The students will work both individually and in a group, using their imagination and originality to create a colorful tribute to the town and the people of Kuldīga. At least one collective creation exercise is envisaged.

© Marcos Lopez, Cow and Skull, Normandie 2010

Creative documentary
By Claudine Doury

The workshop Creative documentary: Using reality to create personal fiction will focus on ways of interacting with reality in story-telling. The participants will be asked to compose a fictitious story based on their own vision, fields of interest and obsessions, using the natural environment and specific spirit around Kuldīga or in the camp. It is suggested that participants each produce a dummy story book in the end.

First, everyone will have to define the outlines of their subject, using experience from the past and focusing on personal desires and secret wishes, in order to spot out different content inputs from what is available in Kuldīga or surroundings. The work will evolve from diving into the subject to unveiling one’s sensitivity while composing a fictitious story. Everyday the teacher will discuss with the participants and accompany them during their shooting, helping them to define and create their own point of view and express their personal universe. At last the effort will be concentrated on editing the photos to compose a sensible and sensitive series, paying attention to how the images flow and interact with each other. The final series should at the end be a reflection of the vision, sensitivity and style of each author.

© Claudine Doury, Fallen Angel, 2008

Who else am I
By Arno Rafael Minkkinen

A thousand people live inside us. We can be high-flying dreamers one moment, distraught losers the next. Plurality is our middle name. We scream at drivers when we are bike riders and vice-versa when we are behind the wheel. We also have our fears and our ambitions guiding the number of personalities lodged deep inside us - a stable of a thousand horses, each saddling us with their own agendas to lead the way.

Who Else Am I is a workshop for photographers curious about meeting a whole new set of characters, all of which are really they themselves. Documentary approaches as much as invented imagery are welcomed in this intensive workshop for photographers of all ages, backgrounds and persuasions. The goal will be to astonish oneself, to explore oneself via vigorous risk taking and patient observation. Focusing too heavily on visual style or digital rescue can easily turn a portfolio into an optical candy shop. Thus we will anchor our imagery to something far more substantial: the reality of the subject behind the lens.

© Arno Rafael Minkkinen, Freshwater, Isle of Wight, England, 2002

Still Life as Critical Aesthetics
By David Bate

This practical workshop will explore the visual language of still life as a form for critical aesthetics. Still life is more than just nature morte, it is like a miniature landscape. Taking this idea, the workshop will introduce a range of ideas and issues and related strategies of critical use and encourage participants to explore these in their own way.

Still life is one of the great art forms used across many fields of art, including the key early photographers Niépsce and Fox Talbot among others, and is continued right through to contemporary art photographers, like Jeff Wall or Wolfgang Tilmans. The workshop will look at the work of different photographers and artists, and develop ideas of critical aesthetics alongside practical photographic work where participants can develop individual projects. Ranging from realism to allegory, impressionism to surrealism, still life can link common objects to uncommon meanings, in relation to the habits of a particular culture.

© David Bate, A Political Error from the series Bungled Memories, 2008

Visual narratives - European borderlines
By Vanessa Winship and George Georgiou

The workshop will start a long-term project with the same title, with participanting young artists coming from Latvia, Turkey, Iceland and Portugal. For a period of 9 months thereafter, each of the participants will be engaged in creating a documentary project, linking together their own and another project country. The results will be summarised in a joint visual narrative – documentation of “European borderlines”. The final project output will represent an exploration of differences and similarities, contrasts and likeness, frontiers and borderlines, both geographical and human – a visual narrative on the countries lying on the georaphical borders of Europe.

The workshop will focus on all aspects of visual story-telling, including usage of text with the images. It will set the direction for further individual work for project participants. As a practical exercise, an intermediate result will be created – each participant will come up with a story exploring the “European Borderlines” in Kuldīga.

NB! THIS WORKSHOP IS FOR PROJECT PARTICIPANTS ONLY - YOUNG PHOTOGRAPHERS FROM LATVIA, TURKEY, ICELAND AND PORTUGAL. THE APPLICATIONS TO TAKE PART IN THE PROJECT ARE CURRENTLY OPEN. FOR MORE INFORMATION, SEE HERE.

© George Georgiou, Faultlines, Turkey East/West, 2006