Azernews.Az

By Nigar Orujova

Yarat contemporary art space is inviting professional photographers and photography enthusiasts from Azerbaijan and abroad to participate in the International Summer Photography School in Baku on August 1-23.

Designed for professional photographers, the Summer School will provide an intensive three-week practical and theoretical training in key areas of contemporary photography.

The programme is developed in collaboration with Magnum Photography.

Magnum's educational and community events provide opportunities for photographers at different stages of their careers to benefit from the vast experience of Magnum's established photographers and employees.

Application deadline is on July 15, and there are only 12 places for this free-of-charge training.

Candidates are advised to apply early to secure a place. Successful applicants will be informed shortly after submitting the form.

To download the application form please visit: http://www.yarat.az/az/learn/all/overview/call-for-international-summer-photography-school.

Applicants will need to have sound photographic skills prior to commencing the programme and are required to submit a sample portfolio of their work (max. 5 images) along with the application form.

Through a variety of Workshops, portfolio reviews, Masterclasses, University partnerships, and visiting classes, Magnum Photos is able to reach out to a larger audience of photographers, enthusiasts, students, and fans.

These events offer hands-on practical, technical, and theoretical advice to help participants develop their own visual language and the skills required to compete in photography's changing market.

The Summer School tutors include Thomas Dworzak (Czech Republic), Chien-Chi Chang (Taiwan) from Magnum Photography, and prominent London-based photographer David Montgomery.

The Summer School will provide participants with a structured framework of theoretical talks, discussions and debates, visual presentations, critiques and assignments.

This will lead to the development of a photographic portfolio reflecting their individual interest and visual practice in relation to urban research.

At the end of the Summer School, a curated salon exhibition from a selection of the participants' photographs will be organized.

During the workshop, students are expected to work on story research and proposal, visual, and editing exercises. These exercises will define and sharpen each student's vision and heighten their storytelling skills using their own motivations and methods.

The School students are expected to bring a story proposal, a digital camera with enough memory cards, a laptop with a HDMI cable, a portfolio either in digital form or in prints, and an audio recorder (optional) to the workshops.

Photography can be either film or digital. Due to the workshop's fast pace, Magnum highly recommends that participants produce and edit their work digitally by their own laptops. Individuals wishing to use film may do so, but at their own cost and during the time limitations.

Famous British photographer David Montgomery will conduct a workshop on August 4-8.

Montgomery is a celebrated award-winning international photographer, heralded by the Q Magazine in their recent special edition on Psycadelia as having produced some of the most iconic images of the 1960s.

Professor Montgomery is internationally known as one of the most legendary photographers of all time. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he attended photography courses run by Alexi Brodevitch in New York and worked for the award-winning photographer Lester Bookbinder for four years, following Bookbinder to England in the early 1960s.

David fell in love with the soft, romantic English light and took up residence in London, where he now continues to live and work. He is known as a portrait photographer of high-profile statesmen and celebrities.

Some of his previous sitters include HM Queen Elizabeth II, the Queen Mother, Prince Andrew, Prince Harry, Lord Mountbatten, Baroness Margaret Thatcher, Lord Hume, Edward Heath, Jack Straw, Bill Clinton, Pierre Trudeau, HM King Hussein, Cardinal Basil Hume, Andy Warhol, Lucien Freud, David Hockney, Francis Bacon, Howard Hodgkin, Josef Bouys, Bill Brant, Gilbert & George, Conrad Shawcross, Cathy de-Monchaux, Grayson Perry, Diana Ross & the Supremes, Mick Jagger, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Jean Shrimpton, Terence Stamp, Professor Stephen Hawking, Alfred Hitchcock, Muhammad Ali, Bing Crosby, Sir Paul McCartney, Chrissy Hinde, Pierce Brosnan, Clint Eastwood, Sean Connery, Barbara Streisand, the Clash, and U2, to name a few.

Montgomery will take students on a journey of discovery through the mysterious world of "seeing". Paying special attention to the endless possibilities of light and the practical potential of cameras and lenses, he will present and explain the fundamental building blocks of photography while encouraging students to develop an awareness of their own personal and creative vision.

Photography has finally been accepted as an honest and interesting way of making a living, and acknowledged as a serious and highly expressive form of art in its own right. Through digital innovation, taking photographs has never been more widely accessible. However, a chasm separates everyday photographs from those that resonate with a subtle emotional depth approaching art. Truly great photographs combine sensitive composition with a fundamental understanding of light, shape, and form. This course aims to get students to master the basics of their cameras and learn to see.

Chien-Chi Chang from Taiwan will hold training on August 9-15.

"Still images can be moving and moving images can be still. Both meet within soundscape," believes Chang, who was born in Taiwan in 1961 and studied at Soochow University and Indiana University. Chang joined Magnum in 1995 and became a full member in 2001.

In his work, Chien-Chi Chang manifests the abstract concepts of alienation and connection.

The Chain is a collection of portraits made in a mental asylum in Taiwan. The life-sized photographs of pairs of patients literally chained together resonate with Chang's jaundiced look at the less visible bonds of marriage. He has treated marital ties in two books - I do I do I do (2001), a collection of images depicting alienated grooms and brides in Taiwan, and Double Happiness (2005), a brutal depiction of the business of selling brides in Vietnam.

The ties of family and culture are also the themes of an ambitious project that began in 1992. For 20 years, Chang has photographed the bifurcated lives of Chinese immigrants in New York's Chinatown along with those of their wives and families back home in Fujian.

A work in progress, China Town was hung at the National Museum of Singapore in 2008 as part of a mid-career survey, Doubleness.

Chang's investigation of the ties that bind one person to another draws on his own deeply divided immigrant experience.

Czech Thomas Dworzak will "explore the territory" on August 18-22.

Thomas Dworzak wants to put his participants in a real-time situation to do a real job, asking each participant to be part of a team. Students will be asked to come up with at least two ideas for the subject they will be assigned.

Through a daily program of shooting, editing, and sequencing with group feedbacks, Thomas Dworzak will help turn them into a better photographer who thinks carefully about what they are trying to achieve.

Being familiar with the Caucasus area in which he led several photographic projects, Dworzak is also willing to lead participants into an exploration of their environment, supporting them with a regular analysis of the evolution of the work.

For further information please contact Education Programme Coordinator Ulvia Akhundova ([email protected]).