In Arles – Workshop Exhibition

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The pictures above are the final selection which made it into the exhibition at the end of the photography workshop in Arles, with two exceptions: the firefighter photo didn’t make it because the local photolab cropped his head off, and I don’t have permission to publish the picture I took of a librarian online.
The workshops in Arles were organized by Stage Photo Arles throughout spring and summer. I chose ‘Portrait: technique et finalité‘ taught by Serge Picard in the middle of August.
On the first day, each participant explained what they wanted to get out of this workshop. It’s weird how those little epiphanies can sometimes come out of nowhere: I told Serge that I’d like to learn how to make the people I photograph more comfortable. All he said was: ‘Why would you want to make them feel comfortable!?’ So by disillusioning me about what I thought would be my biggest hurdle during the workshop Serge had already shown me the direction my series for that week would take: My initial idea of simply photographing people at their workplace got marked by the awkward (quelquechose de gauche).
I think that weird atmosphere was even somewhat inevitable for some of the sessions. I don’t really know what I expected when I went to my first shoot at the bakery at 23:30. All I know is that the baker didn’t quite seem to like my accent when I speak French, and when, during smalltalk, I failed to agree with him that there were too many Arabs in France he seemed have lost all sympathy for me. The picture’s still my favourite one of the entire week though.