Artist Blog

Every week an artist whose single image was published by Der Greif is given a platform in which to blog about contemporary photography.

Until March this year I had never attended a photography workshop. I never intended too either. I studied BA Photography at Portsmouth University. It was a general course which didn't focus on editorial, documentary or commercial photography specifically but covered all areas in part. There was some theory and a little bit of technical teaching. It is safe to say I have learnt most technical and business skills assisting and on the job. The idea of attending a workshop always made me feel a bit queasy. Workshops such as 'lighting' and 'street photography' give me this feeling. Photographers passing on their knowledge, the 'right way to do it' and proclaiming to make you 'a better photographer'. I don't like the idea of using a camera on a workshop. Having to split off in groups or alone to produce something in a limited time and then present it to the group and find out if it is 'good or bad'. Bullshit. It makes me anxious. Photo book making workshops seem like they might be more suited to me, you might pick up some editing skills, however I realised ultimately you still have to produce something that represents your time on the workshop and the onus is having achieved something. Anyway, a good friend, great photographer and fellow Jason Fulford fan Rick Pushinsky mentioned he was going on a workshop led by Jason in the outskirts of Barcelona. To be honest, I didn't even think twice. I booked it and we bought our flights immediately. The workshop entitled "Everywhere there is grammatical mysticism" was run by Widephoto Bcn. I had never heard of them before but noticed they had done a work shop with TONK, how had I missed this? I love TONK. Before the workshop we had to prepare and digitally send 25 of our own photographs and 25 found or anonymous images. This made me a little anxious as I didn't really want feedback on my own work or want to come out of this thing with the 'definitive' edit of the project I am probably never going to finish. Never the less I was excited about going to Barcelona and meeting Jason Fulford. Rick and I travelled together, both having never attending a workshop before or ever intending too wondering how it might play out. We arrived at Cal Viso which was an incredible place in the hills of Navas just outside Barcelona. We were straight into a word association game, writing down words that we liked or were in our head at the time, pinning them up alongside everyone else's on the wall, picking one word from everyones list and then making a sentence before reading it out to the group, PUBLICLY. I was anxious. But I made a stupid sentence and it was good. It was just an ice breaker. Jason explained the weekend would be full of this style of exercises and I was relieved. Phew, we might not actually have to produce anything definitive. What a relief as I am not very good at finishing things. So from Thursday to Sunday we workshopped. It was intense, we holed up in a room around a big squared table and we workshopped. Being a Jason Fulford workshop it was about editing but the pressure was removed, we didn't have to produce the definitive edit of the projects we had all been working on. We would be allowed to leave without the golden book dummy. It was fantastic actually. The Widephoto team were amazing. Really organised, into good photography and really really friendly. My fellow participants were also all lovely and we now even have a private facebook group together. All of the tasks were designed to exercise the editing muscle. Photographer's are notoriously bad at this but no one was there to 'get better' at it necessarily, it was just to be more aware of it. All of our found and personal images were face down in a huge pile on the table and we chose images at random and then had to find relating images. We presented the combinations and they were documented but ultimately we threw them back into the pile and moved on not having to stand by our failures or successes for longer than 2 minutes. The exercises were broken up by walking through the country side collecting bits of nature, make slides out of the nature, eating amazing catalan food. On the final two days we went through the intense process of working through each others personal projects. Widephoto had produced 5 sets of each of our work. There was 15 of us so we split into 3 groups of 5 and worked on a photographers project. Each member of the smaller group did an edit of a photographer thus presenting 5 different possible edits of the work. We had half an hour to do an edit and present the work however we saw fit. I loved this.It wasn't about the work being good or bad. It wasn't about the work at all. We didn't have to offer critique and it was far removed from a portfolio review analysis. Everyone interpreted each others work very differently and that is what it is about, it is and endless process. It was fun and I created some ridiculous HTML 5 website in the air via mime as well as a kids book. The kids book was for Lita Bosch's work and I called Donde esta mid bota? Jason remarked that he and his partner Tamara often do this kind of exercise a 'Stupid Arbitrary Goal' (I think  that is what he called, that is what is in my note book anyway). A journey to nowhere, a way of navigating something, passing time with an arbitrary purpose. I realised this is what I like to do, I did it in Japan with Leaf Peeper and I enjoy the freedom in doing it the non reconciliation. Also, Jason loves Aerobie. Initially the anxiety in me thought he was going to launch it across the room, we'd have to catch it and he'd make us 'freestyle' or something but thankfully it was just for recreation during the breaks. It is my birthday on the 6th of May and I have asked for an Aerobie. I did it. I did a workshop and it was great and now I don't have to do one ever again.