4. Alexander Gronsky - Experiencing Landscape
This is what I saw. Experiencing Landscape.
By Alexander Gronsky
Photography for me is closely related with a struggle to record the personal experience of being within a certain landscape. How do we define a landscape? Is it something we can distance ourselves from? The lens inevitably puts us in the center of everything we see and thus makes observing a landscape a narcissistic act of observing oneself within it. I believe it is only through such act that we can acquire what can be called a "personal view" and therefore a persona.
The workshop will be committed to a broad definition of photography as a lens-based medium. We'll use landscape as a starting point, a theme to be interpreted and expressed by a variety of artistic means. Participants will be encouraged to interpret the subject any way they feel appropriate, and to explain their decisions and articulate their goals in discussion within the group. Though all students will be expected to produce work, there will be no assignments. The decisions on the content and the tools to use will be yours, while I will offer my support at all stages of the process. I see this workshop as a joint effort to reflect on the core motifs of one's photographic practice.
Prior requirements/preparations:
This is a workshop for photographers interested in reflecting on their artistic practice within the broad theme of landscape. Bring all equipment necessary to execute a small project and a portfolio of relevant work.
Alexander Gronsky was born in Tallinn, Estonia in 1980 and began working as a press photographer in 1998. He gradually moved from editorial photography to working on personal documentary projects focusing on the contemporary Russian landscape. He has received numerous awards, including the 2013 Prix Levallois-Epson, the 2012 Foam Paul Huf Award, the 2010 Silver Camera Grand Prix, Moscow, the 2009 Aperture Portfolio Prize, and the 2009 Linhof Young Photographer Award. His work has been presented in solo exhibitions in Tokyo, Moscow, Paris, New York, Amsterdam, Beijing, Bogota, and Levallois, France, as well as numerous group exhibitions. He was a participant in the 2003 World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass. Gronsky is based in Riga, Latvia and is represented by INSTITUTE (UK).