Jonas Bendiksen: Photography and Storytelling
14–15 November 2015
«I always try to be a human being before a photographer. My projects usually arise out of people, out of their capacity to react to adverse, difficult circumstances. It is people who stir my curiosity.» Jonas Bendiksen
This intensive masterclass with Jonas Bendiksen will help photographers structure to their way of observing, photographing the world around us. Through a careful reading of participants’ works and shooting sessions in the city of Turin, Bendiksen will help guide each student towards a personal working method and a unique vision, to then be finalised as photographic imagery.
Unlike many of his colleagues, Bendiksen did not build his career working in war zones, but operating in places which are as complex and worthy of being recounted, such as the Russian marginal areas that arose in the wake of the disintegration of the USSR. The photographer’s research focuses on the narrative potential of photography. Stories from all around the world, far from the mainstream news, capable of raising questions and provoking reflections.
The workshop will encourage students to recognise the infinite stories to be found in our surroundings, and tell them through effective imagery. Several methods and approaches will be explored, with no limitations in terms of genre.
On the first morning, the author will illustrate his own method of work and the stories to which he dedicated his work over past years, providing an overview of the various contexts in which he operated and the visual results that they entailed. An outdoor shooting session will take place in the afternoon, followed by a portfolio review of the participants’ works. The second day, after a second outdoor shooting session, will come to a close with a moment of sharing and debating on the materials produced.
The masterclass will be held in English, and a maximum of 15 participants will be admitted. Every participant will be given a Leica M camera with lens on free loan to be used for the shooting assignments of the masterclass.
Participants are required to bring a sufficient number of memory cards, a laptop and a digital portfolio (in a memory stick) representing their own work, comprising a maximum of 25 images in JPG format, named as follows: SURNAME_NAME_001, SURNAME_NAME_002; etc.
Jonas Bendiksen
Jonas Bendiksen was born in 1977 in Norway. He started his career at the age of 19, working as an intern at the Magnum Photo Agency in London. He then left for Russia, where he concentrated on his own photojournalistic activity: over this period, he focused on marginal stories of the ex-Soviet Union, which he brought together in a publication entitled Satellites (2006). In 2005, thanks to financial support from the Alicia Patterson Foundation, he started work on the project The Places We Live, a research project into shanty towns all over the world. For the project, he produced photographs, projections and recordings to produce three-dimensional installations. Bendiksen has been awarded a number of prizes, including the 2003 Infinity Award by the International Center of Photography (NY); second place in the ‘Daily Life Stories’ category of the 2004 World Press Photo; and first prize for the Picture of the Year International Awards 2001. His documentary on life in Kibera – a shanty town in Nairobi – was published in Paris Review, having been given the 2007 National Magazine Award. He currently collaborates with magazines such as National Geographic, Geo, Newsweek, the Independent on Sunday Review, the Sunday Times Magazine, the Telegraph Magazine as well as with the Rockefeller Foundation.