Lichtblick-School

Visual Story-Telling

Workshop with Nigel Dickinson


Nigel Dickinson

First day :
We project a small selection of each student's work - each student shows one or two stories of ten pictures each (depending on number of students). Each student talks about who they are, what is their work, what they would like to learn. Local and foreign students explore the city and start collecting ideas by a kind of visual diary of their walk around Tbilisi.

Second day:
This is the day for discussing in a wider way what sort of themes, series students might consider shooting. I give a short projection with a wide series of works, say ten different contemporary photographers who use photography to tell stories in different ways, through documentary, reportage, landscape, portraits series. We talk about different approaches, some intimate, some with an overview, distant, with people without people, some fly on the wall, some political, some not etc. To try and give students a wide remit of how they may tackle a subject. Then in the afternoon we have brief discussions with students individually about what they want to shoot in the next few days.
The new work has to be shot between this morning and next days evening - so a two day reportage or photographic series.

Third/fourth days:
The students have 2 days to shoot a new work. The idea is that I together with the local students help people and they shoot all day and come back in the evening. We do an edit of each students work from the day and choose a dozen pictures to show the rest of the group. Each early evening before dinner, we project really quickly, for a group critic, these quick edited pictures - so everyone can share what each person shot during the day, and everyone can hear comments on the pictures + a very short conversation before rapidly moving on to the next students work.
We need to work really hard to get everyone's work together and in order to make a final projection evening with the other workshops.

What the students bring to the course:
Their own camera and of course their laptops.
Each student brings a portfolio of say 20 pictures + of their work for a private portfolio meeting - and or including two sets of ten pictures to project on the first afternoon.
Each student is also asked to have already prepared an idea of what they might like to shoot during the week. Also perhaps (but not requisite) even to have already researched a little bit on what type of locations people in and around Tbilisi so they don't lose time.

Half of the workshop participants will be local - they have to play the role of fixers who can help foreign students translate, make contacts, find the place, location, people to do their work (and of course do their own work) - maybe we pair people up or make small groups.

 

 
Nigel Dickinson

Nigel Dickinson is a British born documentary photographer, photojournalist and filmmaker working for 30 years in the field. His work focuses on the environment, human condition, marginalized communities, sustainable development, identity and culture. Dickinson is also known for his environmental portraits, cuisine, editorial and travel photography. He is also a specialist film and tv stills photographer, and experienced with aerial and landscape photography. He works across editorial and commercial platforms, with art directors, independently originating and researching material, and alongside journalists and writers. He has won several awards. ‘Deforestation in South East Asia’ took UNEP bronze prize at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. ‘Mad Cows in Britain’ won a World Press award in the news category in 1997. ‘Roma Gypsies’ won runner up in the W.Eugene Smith Award in 2000. The book ‘Meat’ was shortlisted for the European Publishers award in 2006. 'Railtracks in Cambodia' won the feature award at UK Press Photographers Year 2008. In 2011 his series 'Smokey Mountain' was selected for the Critical Mass Award, which will be shown in April 2012 at Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, OR. Dickinson has two published monographs. The first ‘Hanging On By Your Fingernails’ about the Great Miners Strike 1984/5, was by Spokesman Press UK in 1987. ‘Sara. Le pelerinage des gitans’, about the annual French Gypsy Pilgrimmage, was published by Actes Sud, France in 2003. Several
books of his work documenting visual artists, including the Italian painter Marco Nereo Rotelli and Mexican sculptor Sebastian, Linz based Stadwerkstatt artist group, Klaus Rinke and Joachim Eckl have been published.
Features have been published regularly by magazines including National Geographic, Figaro, Mare, Geo, Stern, Paris Match, D-Republicca, La Vanguardia, The New York Times. Marie Claire, Vogue, Spiegel, Time, Newsweek, New Scientist, The Guardian, Sunday Times, and The Independent.
He has shot photography campaigns for Greenpeace across South East Asia, Amnesty international in Centra America, Friends of the Earth in Borneo, The IAEA in Chernobl, Oxfam in Honduras, Christian Aid in Africa, Children Direct in Bosnia, Ayuda en Accion in Honduras, The Red Cross and Crescent Societies in Bosnia and Honduras He has directed films including 'Energy Today' for the International Energy Agency and 'The Solar Power Village' for Tamera 'Um Mondo Humanitario". Solo exhibitions have been exhibited at Arles Rencontres International, Visa Pour L'Image, Krakow Photo Month, Moving Walls Documentary Series,

www.nigeldickinson.com

 

Workshop Information:

For different travel arrangements and detailed information please contact
Tina Schelhorn: tinaschelhorn@web.de, +49 178 565 11 49

 

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