Learning objectives
The aim of the course is to learn a conscious working method.
This training course aims to provide students with the appropriate tools to enable them to develop both structured photographic / photo-journalistic projects, and to develop their own narrative vision. Moreover ample space will be given to a vertical reading of the history of photography, with particular attention to contemporary pivotal works of the last decades, with the aim of intriguing and accompanying the student towards a constant and personal search for references, which are incentive for the achievement of one's own style.
This point will be taken up and deepened in all the lessons - also with brief hints of correlation, exchange and mutual influences with other media such as painting, art and cinema. Constant attention will be devoted to understand where to be inspired, ho to ask questions, ho to puzzle pieces of other “languages” in order to create your own.
The intent is to build, during this process, an increasingly proactive confrontation of mutual stimuli to become a bilateral exchange with the teacher and not only supine and passive for the students.
Prerequisites
The prerequisites are that the student is interested in what is happening around him, curious, present in his time, in the contingency of his own contemporaneity and that he has already taken some photographs with his smartphone.
Course unit content
The course aims to identify a story, transform it into an idea translate it into a concrete and articulated photographic project, and add other cross-media languages based on the student's interest.
The aim is to tell a story, make it attractive and exciting, and develop and/or consolidate its own authorial language, analyzing the historical, professional, creative, theoretical and technical aspects of photography.
During the lessons the teacher will deal with two types of topics: The first is more purely technical.
This is not a technical laboratory.
As regards the technique, the student will be provided with elementary technical bases of photography, and during the laboratory, themes aimed at achieving his own language, finding his own expression through the interpretation of a story, of the shot, the use of artificial light and ambient light, editing, software, colour correction and colour grading as added value and the ethical limits of photo retouching.
The second will be more related to the relationship with newspapers, publishers, festivals, competitions, galleries, grants, and the types of photographers' approach to stories: from breaking news to long-term projects.
The two areas of the course aim to provide the student with a heterogeneous vision of the professional world of photography and in particular of photojournalism.
The two topics covered in class, with the supervision of the teacher and a systematic and constant comparison, will be aimed at identifying a story to be carried out during the laboratory period, which will be addressed, analyzed and shared from time to time in the classroom throughout the stage of development and production, and which will be subject to evaluation in the examination.
Full programme
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Bibliography
Testi di riferimento Reference bibliography:
Theoretical texts:
Ryszard Kapuscinski, autoritratto di un reporter
Beaumont Newhall, Storia della fotografia, Einaudi, Torino, 1997 (1972).
Roland Barthes, La camera chiara, Einaudi, Torino, 1982.
Susan Sontag, Sulla fotografia, Einaudi, Torino, 2004.
Roland Barthes, La camera chiara, Einaudi, Torino, 1982.
Susan Sontag, Davanti al dolore degli Altri, Trento, 2003.
Uliano Lucas, Tatiana Agliani, La realtà e lo sguardo, storia del fotogiornalismo in italia, Edizione Einaudi.
Italo Calvino, L'avventura di un fotografo
Susie Linfield, La luce crudele, Fotografia e violenza politica, Edizione Contrasto
Recommended technical text:
Michael Langford, Nuovo trattato di fotografia moderna, Il Castello, 2018.
Recommended photography books:
Philip Jones Griffits, Vietnam Inc. Phaidon.
James Nachtwey - Inferno, Phaidon.
Richard Billingham, Rays a Laugh, Scalo.
Paolo Verzone, Cadets
Robert Franck, The Americans, Pantheon.
Jérôme Sessini, The Wrong Side, Contrasto.
Paolo Pellegrin, If I was dying, Dewi Lewis Publishing.
Giulio Di Sturco, Ganga Ma, Gost.
Cesare Zavattini, Paul Strand, Un Paese
Teaching methods
The course will consist of lectures, practical exercises, design, creation, analysis and review of a photo-journalistic reportage and, if possible, meetings with guests from the sector.
Assessment methods and criteria
The exam involves the development of a photographic or photo-journalistic project agreed upon with the teacher on the basis of the chosen path.
The student will have to demonstrate that he/she has learned the fundamental technical notions and that he/she has achieved a narrative awareness in developing the agreed project.
The photographic narration will remain the "core" of the project, but cross-media languages will also be accepted and appreciated.
Other information
Basic equipment is recommended to participate in this workshop, but a smartphone is also sufficient.
