1000 WORDS WORKSHOP WITH ANTOINE D’AGATA IN MOROCCO, OCTOBER 2010

©Antoine d'Agata/Magnum

1000 Words is proud to present its first workshop with the Magnum photographer, Antoine d’Agata, in Fez, Morocco (25-31 October 2010). We are making a call for photographers, professional and amateur alike, to submit entries for this unique creative experience.

“It isn’t the eye that photography poses on the world that interests me but its most intimate rapport with that world”
Antoine d’Agata

Please scroll down for more information and how to submit.

ANTOINE D’AGATA:

Antoine d’Agata is without doubt one of the most unique and important photographers of our age. His imagery is characterised by an intense and highly subjective experience that pushes the limits of social documentary photography. Born in Marseille, 1961, he left France in 1990 to study at The International Centre for Photography in New York alongside Nan Goldin and Larry Clark. His work has been published in the books Insomnia, Vortex, Stigma and Agonie amongst others, and he has been exhibited internationally at galleries and festivals including Rencontres d’Arles, Noorderlicht, FotoFreo and The Photographers Gallery, London.

He has been a member of Magnum Photos since 2004 and is represented by Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire in Paris.

ABOUT US:

1000 Words Photography is an artist-led organisation that has promoted the work of more than 280 art photographers through publishing and exhibiting opportunities. The organisation´s flagship is 1000 Words, an online magazine dedicated to highlighting the best work in contemporary art photography worldwide. The site attracts approximately 140,000 unique visitors from more than 75 countries every month. The 1000 Words Workshop is organised by Tim Clark, writer and editor-in-chief at 1000 Words and Michael Grieve, 1000 Words contributing editor and photographer represented by Agence Vu.

ABOUT THE WORKSHOP:

The location for the 1000 Words Workshop will be the beautifully evocative city of Fez, Morocco. The salon will take place in an authentically restored riad in the heart of the medieval medina of Fez. The workshop will be an intense experience lasting six days between 25-31 October 2010 and will consist of 12 participants.

We are looking for a diverse range of participants who understand the work of Antoine d’Agata and feel that their own work will benefit from his guidance. Each participant will be asked to examine the ultimate goal of his approach, to play an active part in his own images and to work on the texture of reality. Since images, like words, only take on meaning when brought together, the workshop will focus on finding the most relevant form for each individual stance. Working with Antoine d’Agata, participants must be ready to photograph intensively throughout the workshop and to extend the limits of their approach. They will have to confront their obsessions and contradictions as they shape a series of images conveying in real or fictional terms their private relationship with the world.

Depending on individual needs the daily structure begins with lunch at the riad and during the afternoon Antoine will encourage group participation in looking, critiquing and developing ideas and image making. In the late afternoon participants will begin to photograph. The week will end with a display of the work created. All participants work will be shown in a special feature on 1000 Words Photography magazine. The purpose of the workshop is to concentrate on a very personal approach to photography and certainly this will be a richly rewarding week for those who wish to push themselves.

PRACTICAL INFORMATION:

The cost of the workshop will be £1250 for 6 days. Once participants have been selected they will be expected to pay a non-refundable deposit of £350 within two weeks. Participants can then pay the rest of the fee in two instalments according to deadlines (see below). Participants are encouraged to arrive the day before the workshop begins for a welcome dinner. The price includes tuition from Antoine d’Agata, a welcome and farewell dinner, lunch everyday and snacks during the afternoon, 24 hour help from the 1000 Words team and an assistant with local knowledge. Participants will be expected to make their own travel arrangements and find accommodation, which in Fez can range from £150 upwards for the week. We can advise on finding the accommodation that best suits you. Remember that most of your time will be spent either at the riad or shooting. For photographers using film we will provide the means for processing and a scanner. Photographers shooting digital will be expected to bring all necessary equipment. All participants should also bring a laptop if they have one. Every effort will be made to accommodate individual technical needs.

HOW TO SUBMIT:

We require that you send 10 images as low res jpegs and/or a link to your website, as well as a short biography and statement about why you think it will be relevant for you to work with Antoine (approx 200 words total). Submissions are to be sent to workshops(a)1000wordsmag(dot)com with the following subject header: SUBMISSION FOR 1000 WORDS WORKSHOP IN FEZ OCTOBER 2010. Tim Clark and Michael Grieve will produce a shortlist from the entries (all those shortlisted will be contacted) and then Antoine will select the final 12.

14 June 2010: Deadline for applications
30 June 2010: Successful candidates contacted
14 July 2010: Deposit due (£350)
16 August 2010: Second instalment due (£350)
31 August 2010: Third instalment due (£550)
24 October 2010: Arrive in Morocco
25 October 2010: Workshop begins
31 October 2010: Workshop ends

Bonne chance!

Vehicles

©Guy Gormely

I recently wrote an introduction for the catalogue to accompany an exhibition of Guy Gormely. The exhibition is called Vehicles on show at the Son Gallery in south London. It features Gormely's work 'Cars' and Tim Smyth's project the 'Nature of Machines'. I unashamedly appropriated the title from William Burroughs.

SOFT MACHINE
Guy Gormely’s photographs are about the total presence of the car and any characteristics unique to this object on which we project our human perceptions. This anthropomorphic stance signals the car as a brooding presence, quietly thinking, like Hitchcock’s Birds ready to take over the world but in the most undramatic way. These cars are guilty as hell but they don’t care. Perhaps they have played host to intoxicated fumbling in lay-by’s, 35mph in a built up area, most certainly they have been flashed or issued a ticket. Gormely’s deadpan pictures could almost sit comfortably on the pages of Auto Trader be it not for an authorial clout. More than mere documents these unlikely, ‘one careful lady owner’ vehicles, consign the car to something ‘other.’

Aside from car mechanics we forget what a car is. Everything about this vehicle is designed to desensitise the horrifying reality that we are hurtling across landscapes in combustible metal forms at terrifying speeds, a mere knee jerk away from total disaster. The soft interior is the grey matter of the car. This is the fragile bit, the container of decisions. Dreams are dreamt in this beige grey interior looking out on to the cinematic world. It is here that we inhale the artificial stench of Magic Tree as Epping Forest blurs past. In this sculpted form is to be found the trace of former occupants, bits of Lego, a sticky two pence, a frayed page 83 of west Norfolk hiding down the back of cracked leather look seats, a scuffed ceiling after a visit to Ikea, a receipt for Tesco, a chewed pen top under the drivers seat.

The French surrealist, George Bataille once remarked that ‘no collector could ever love a work of art as much as a fetishist loves a shoe’. Or a car for that matter. The cars reality is open to projection. We are sold freedom but Gormely shows the drab object of neutral colours and the generic patterns of a Gap world. Only JG Ballard could see the potential for the sexualisation of the Ford Mondeo rust bucket hot from the suburbs, ejaculating its leaking oil and limply spewing water onto the windscreen, dotted with dead bugs, smudging obscurity all over the vision of the drivers side as it penetrates the Dartford Tunnel.

In the simplest of ways Gormley is showing us an absurdity. We all know the bigger picture about what these ego extensions are doing to the environment and the casualty department. The context is clear, so lets return to the thing itself without the glossy diversions that condition our attention span when we should be looking ahead.