Interpretive Documentary Photography with Matt Black
Workshop with Matt Black
When: from 14th to 18th June 2023
Where: Officine Fotografiche Roma – via Libetta, 1
Participation fee: 1500€
Early Bird Promo: 1200€ for registrations by April, 21st 2023
WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION:
Join photographer Matt Black for a five-day, intensive workshop designed to sharpen your relationship to photography and the world. Matt will guide you to think critically about your work and consider your vision, your voice, and its purpose.
Building on this foundation, we will work towards sharpening the language of your photography so that it more closely aligns with your ideas, goals and personality, highlighting your ability to interpret and visualize the world in a unique manner Participants will leave the class with a more focused and personalized approach to their photography, as well as an increased understanding of editing and presentation.
This five-day course comprises two sections. The first part is a four-day intensive workshop photographing in the streets of Rome. Working as a class, we will produce new work on a joint theme. Participants will discuss and settle on a theme that each participant will then be free to execute according to their own interests. Through daily image-making, and personal review sessions, we will strive to bring out the unique qualities and point of view of each participant’s work.
On the final day, in a joint effort with Yolanda Cuomo and Bobbie Richardson’s concurrent The Art of the Photo Book, participants will learn the process and nature of the publishing field. Using your newly-created images, we will edit, design, and produce photo portfolios for an improvised journal that each student will receive a copy of.
Participants should bring a 20-40 image portfolio of their previous work, a digital camera, thumbdrive, and a laptop for editing.
Please contact didattica@officinefotografiche.org with any questions.
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BOTH WORKSHOPS:
Participants of each workshop will work separately; on the first day, the workshops will merge for a lecture and discussion of how Cuomo and Black have worked together, collaborating to create fully-realized projects. On the last day, the two workshops will join together again to produce a group project exploring a common theme from the streets of Rome, resulting in a journal publication that every participant will receive a copy of.
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WORKSHOP FORMAT: THE ROME SESSION: MATT BLACK
Independent workshops; the classes will be brought together for the first and last days of the workshops:
Day 1:
AM – 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM
- Meet separately first: Yo and Matt start their classes
- Yo – Get to know your project
- Matt – Matt presentation
Lunch break 12:00 – 1:00 PM
PM – 1:00 – 4:00 PM
- Yo – Begin editing
- Matt – Student presentations
PM – 4:00 – 6:00 PM
- Joint Lecture: Yo and Matt show work they’ve done together and books they like to full group
Day 2:
AM – 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM
- Group Project discussion
Lunch break 12:00 – 1:00 PM
PM – 1:00 – 6:00 PM
- Class photographs on Rome’s streets
Day 3:
AM – 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM
- Student work review and discussion
Lunch break 12:00 – 1:00 PM
PM – 1:00 – 6:00 PM
- Class photographs on Rome’s streets
Day 4:
AM – 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM
- Student work review and discussion
Lunch break 12:00 – 1:00 PM
PM – 1:00 – 6:00 PM
- Class photographs on Rome’s streets
LATE PM
- Photo pupils submit their work
Day 5:
( Photo pupils submit their work the night before)
All Day
AM – 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM
- Everyone meets and produces the journal: work partners assigned; partner chat; put work into InDesign, producing 6-10 pages;
Lunch break 12:00 – 1:00 PM
PM – 1:00 – 6:00 PM
- Journal production: print thumbnails; pool pages, edit on wall/table; create one journal to be distributed at the end of the day.
End of workshops
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BIO:
Matt Black is from California’s Central Valley, a rural, agricultural area in the heart of the state. He has traveled over 100,000 miles across 46 states for his project American Geography. Other works include The Dry Land, about the impact of drought on California’s agricultural communities, and The Monster in the Mountains, about the disappearance of 43 students in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero. Both of these projects, accompanied by short films, were published by The New Yorker.
His work has appeared regularly in TIME Magazine, The New Yorker, The California Sunday Magazine, and other publications. He has been honored three times by the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Prize, including their top honor for journalism. In 2015, he received the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Award for Humanistic Photography, and was named a senior fellow at the Emerson Collective. He is a member of Magnum Photos.
