About the workshop
The workshop is looking for a diverse range of participants (both amateur and professional photographers) who are passionate about story telling through photography, by assembling sequences of images (or any other visual material) to represent a very personal experience, occurrence, or poetry even.
Each participant will be asked to play a very active part in his or her own images in order to work on both the texture and layers of narrative to present a dummy of a photo book or a photo zine focusing on a specific theme / story in the end of the workshop.
The main focus of the five-day (all together 15 hours) workshop will be the editing and reflection. Editing is the process of looking profoundly and deeply at the photographs you are making, to challenge yourself with a critical eye, to review and reject the weak images, and to find something remarkable on the contact sheet or among your proof prints.
The goal of the workshop
Editing is a personal and contemplative process.
Working with Simon, participants shall be ready to critique your own images objectively, and to stay open towards different methods until you found one that feels comfortable. You will have to confront your obsessions and contradictions as you shape a series of images. The purpose of the theme,【Personal space】is to concentrate on a very intimate relationship between you and your photographic stories.
The workshop will begin with a general introduction of the theme and an open discussion regarding the task of the workshop, the following meetings, possible ideas and your general plan to realize the dummy of the photo book / photo zine, etc. We will spend most of the time discussing and debating about the selection and the sequencing of your narratives until we found the most charming and poetic way to structure the stories.
* Participants should bring his / her own work-in-progress material (preferable printed proof prints of 10 x 15cm) in order to discuss about the selection with ease.
* On the last day of our workshop, we will organize a cosy presentation for all the participants to present his / her own final work in Cankarjev dom during the 2020 Slovenian Book Fair, participants are more than welcome to invite their families and friends to join and to discuss about the different approaches of the work.
About Simon Chang
Simon Chang was born in Taipei, Taiwan, 1978.
Simon has been living and working as a documentary photographer in Europe since 2003, mainly focusing on stories about people whose voices were rarely heard, the communities being ignored by the mainstream society, and the mental-health issues in the post-conflict regions, etc. Shortly after graduating from the department of communication arts of Catholic Fu-Jen Catholic University in Taipei, Simon moved to Prague, Czech Republic and got accepted to the Master’s program in photography at Prague Film and Television Academy of the Performing Arts (FAMU) in 2014. He is currently based in Ljubljana since 2010.
Simon is the winner of multiple Slovenia Press Photo Awards in the best story category (people/sport) in 2011, 2012 and 2015, and he was also awarded the Kaoshuing Awards and the Golden Tripod Awards (2 times), two of the most prestigious awards of contemporary art and book publication in Taiwan in 2011, 2018 and 2020. His works have been exhibited in museums and galleries both in Europe and Asia, including the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid (Spain), the National Centre for Contemporary Arts in Moscow (Russia), National Culture Centre, Cankarjev dom in Ljubljana (Slovenia), Balassi Institute - Collegium Hungaricum Berlin (Germany), Trieste Contemporanea (Italy), Taipei Fine Arts Museum (Taiwan), National Art Museum in Beijing (China), etc.
A brief work plan & schedule of the workshop
16.10.2020 (Fri.) – # 01
Introduction of the theme of the workshop,【Personal space / Osebni prostor】/ Reviewing the portfolio and previous work of the participants.
22.10.2020 (Thu.) – # 02
Editing / selection and examples.
05.11.2020 (Thu.) – # 03
Editing / sequencing and examples.
12.11.2020 (Thu.) – # 04
Editing / sequencing + final selection. To confirm the type of paper, layout of the book including the front and the rear cover, test prints, etc.
19.11.2020 (Thu.) – # 05
Presentation of the final work.
27.11.2020 (Fri.) – # 06
Presentation of the final books made by the participants of the workshop (Cankarjev dom / Slovenian Book Fair 2020)
Applications : barbara.ceferin@galerijafotografija.si
Price: 200 eur (DDV/VAT incl.)
Books for reference
Diane Arbus, edited by Doon Arbus and Marvin Israel (Aperture, 1972).
Diane Arbus: Magazine Work, edited by Doon Arbus and Marvin Israel (Aperture, 1984).
Richard Avedon, Evidence 1944–1994, with essays by Jane Livingston and Adam Gopnik (Random House, 1994).
Richard Avedon, The Sixties, text by Doon Arbus (Random House, 1999).
Richard Avedon and James Baldwin, Nothing Personal (Atheneum, 1964).
Richard Avedon and Truman Capote, Observations (Simon & Schuster, 1959).
Julia Margaret Cameron’s Women, by Sylvia Wolf (The Art Institute of Chicago, 1998).
Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Decisive Moment (Simon & Schuster, 1952).
Robert Frank, The Americans, with an introduction by Jack Kerouac (Grove Press, 1959).
David Hockney, Cameraworks, with an essay by Lawrence Weschler (Knopf, 1984).
David Hockney, Hockney on Photography, with conversations with Paul Joyce (Harmony Books, 1988).
Jacques Henri Lartigue, Diary of a Century, edited by Richard Avedon (Viking Press, 1970).
Sally Mann, Immediate Family, with an afterword by Reynolds Price (Aperture, 1992).
Irving Penn, Centennial (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2017).
Irving Penn, Worlds in a Small Room (Grossman, 1974).
Georgia O’Keeffe, a Portrait by Alfred Stieglitz, with an introduction by Georgia O’Keeffe (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1997).
Anders Petersen by Anders Petersen (Maxstrom, 2013).
