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Space and Narration workshop

For local photography students, recent graduates and emerging professionals

Tuesday, 16 May 2023
10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
61/6 Ward Place, Colombo 07
LKR 2,500/- (lunch and tea provided)
Scholarships available

Limited spaces available.
Please write to programmes@gbtrust.net
with your CV and portfolio to register.

Supported by Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia

Join us at the Geoffrey Bawa Trust for a workshop with acclaimed architectural photographer Hélène Binet. A fervent advocate of analogue photography, working exclusively with film, and a firm believer that ‘the soul of photography is its relationship with the instant,’ Binet has photographed Geoffrey Bawa's work and describes her encounter with Bawa's garden Lunuganga, as a pivotal moment in her career.

The representation of space with photography is an inherently impossible task. This undertaking is comparable to the path of a traveller who seeks to grasp the horizon. The line of the horizon is intangible and unattainable just as an image can never completely depict a space.

In relation to this impossibility, Hélène has developed a methodology to help overcome this limitation through pairing images with visual association. This will allow participants to create their own realm using their imagination of that space.

Photography is a selective view ‘from some-where’. This selection occurs by laying out four perpendicular segments in your vision of space. This allows observations to be specific and new relationships to emerge from the newly confined photo- graphic space. This happens between forms, geometries, light, textures, and void.

During this workshop we will look at this methodology that can tease the imagination of the viewer allowing them to feel and interact with some of its aspects.

For this we will experiment with the making of pairs and a series of photographs.

The first part of the workshop you will be photographing on the site (the de Saram house and its vicinity), then we will work on making a narrative with your images.

You will have to select one or two of the topics to explore on the site. These could be traces -threshold - light and shadows - geometry – harmony - silence - musicality. Approaches in colour and black and white are both welcome.

INSTRUCTIONS AND MATERIAL

Necessary material per group or student:

1 camera with the possibility to make long exposures - 1 stand, if possible, with level
1 empty memory card with good capacity (8GB or 16GB)
bring your own laptop to process the images, if possible (to adjust contrast and brightness & colour balance)

Shooting session instructions: