Bruno Stevens and Ed Kashi, Siena (picture by stebaraz, 2007)
Last weekend, from Friday to Sunday, I was in Siena, Tuscany, where I attended a photographic workshop with two outstanding photographers: Bruno Stevens (left, see also here) and Ed Kashi (right)
The course was organized by Canon and Toscana Photographic Workshop, and even if the organization on the italian side was not exactly perfect, the experience was really great, and worth the travel and (maybe) the expenses.
I am quite informed about photojournalism and photographers (thanks also to some previous Tpw workshops I attended during the last years) but I have to admit that I did not know so much about Kashi and Stevens before the weekend.
Ed (Kashi) is american, and has been in the business since the early 80's, working on assignments on social and political issues for National Geographic, New York Times, Newsweek and many more, and working on personal projects; in the last years he's been facing the challenge of multimedia storytelling (1,2 and 3)
Bruno (Stevens) comes from Belgium, and has been working as a sound engineer for over 20 years: he became a photojournalist only 9 years ago, but he immediately became one of the most successfull photographers around; he usually covers war zones, natural disasters and crisis in general, and he works both for newspapers and magazines and for humanitarian organizations (UN, MSF, HRW, etc etc..)
Ed and Bruno are quite different characters: while Ed is calm, precise, pragmatic, positive, and gives the impression to be as steady as the rock, Bruno is exuberant, absolutely talkative, a real volcano!
But, beyond their differences, they are really committed to their jobs, and they firmly believe in photography as a medium able to change society: with different accents, they seemed to me to embody "the concerned photographer".
During the workshop Ed and Bruno analyzed the portfolio of the participants, and showed some oh their most recent pieces of work: Ed showed us some material about Nigeria, Kurdistan (here) and about his personal projects, while Bruno showed us some shots form his recent 6 weeks trip to Iran (here), and some stuff about Sri Lanka, Sudan, Palestine, and about his project on tubercolosis.
We were sent out to shoot some images both on Friday and on Saturday, but with no specific assignment (and this is my main reason of complaint, but I think it depends more on Tpw than on Ed and Bruno) and we've been asked to make 15 pictures selections of every day of shoot, that were edited and commented by Ed and Bruno in the classroom meetings of Saturday and Sunday.
I found myself in troubles on Friday: I usually shoot following a theme or a project, and I was not ready to be granted such a high degree of freedom, and to be left free to shoot in a tourist-crowded Siena.
Even I was quite disappointed by my pictures, I took some decent shots.
It happened more or less the same in the second day, even if I had the fortune to bump into the celebrations of a Contrada (neighborhood), and so I focused - even if not on a "story" - at least on an homogenous subject.
The results, while quite messy in terms of composition and cleanliness of the images, were better from the point of view of my approach to the subject: I was using a 24mm prime (35mm equivalent on my digital reflex) and I was "obliged" to get close to the subjects.
We were divided in two groups, and I had my pictures edited by Ed on Saturday and by Bruno on Sunday: I really loved the way Bruno did the edit, he was positive but he knew how to be "tough" on some bad images, even in a funny and entertaining way (they told me that Ed's edit on the second day was quite "tough" too, so it may have been a deliberated choice to be more "soft" on the first day and more strict on the second.
Anyway, I really learnt a lot from Ed and Bruno, both in terms of photographic language and - above all - in terms of opening my mind to the essence of what it does mean to be a photographer.
If you want you can take a look at some of my shoots on my flickr space.
Ed posted some thoughts on the workshop here: you can take a look at his blog to share his vision of what happened in Siena.
For me it was really an inspiring experience, both from a photographical point of view and from a more general one; Ed and Bruno art two very committed individuals, who shaped their lives (and keep on trying every single day) around the values they firmly believe in: giving voice with their job to who does not have a voice and cannot be listened, hoping that making avalaible to a wider audience what happens around the world can contribute to make this planet a better place.
Thank you Bruno, thank you Ed: I wish you all the best.
