Magnum Photos Event

Workshop 

Magnum Masterclass in Toronto 

Workshop 

When:

May 22 - May 24 2015

Where:

CONTACT Photography Festival

Toronto

Canada

In conjunction with the ScotiaBank CONTACT Photography Festival, Magnum Photos are pleased to announce a 3 day Magnum Masterclass led by acclaimed contemporary photographers Michael Christopher Brown, Mark Power, and Larry Towell.

Magnum Photos is an agency synonymous with integrity, curiosity and ‘concerned’ photography. For over sixty years, Magnum’s international photographers have chronicled the world; interpreting its environment, people and events and helping to shape documentary photography as a modern form of artistic expression. In the tradition of Magnum’s commitment to emerging photographers, this Masterclass will give limited participants an opportunity to refine their photographic practice and editing skills with a sense of authorship under the guidance of Magnum photographers.

The Magnum Masterclass at CONTACT 2015 will be focused on book editing. It is a 3 day event aimed at photographers with completed bodies of work, who require advice on honing editing skills, final image selections, and layout. This event provides photographers with an opportunity to edit and produce book dummys of finished bodies of work, under the guidance of experienced published Magnum photographers. There will be no more than 15 students per group. Participants will be asked to bring printed versions of their project, book dummies, as well as additional images or ephemera from the project that they will be working on. Each participant will be given a choice of mentor for the masterclass upon registration, and all efforts will be made to place participants with their first choices.

During this 3 day Book Making Masterclass, the program will incorporate the following elements:

• Nightly presentations from Magnum photographers on their own book projects
• Individual and group critiques and editing sessions
• Book layout and sequencing
• Informal group meetings with the other groups and instructors

Critiques will be conducted both individually and in groups, encouraging confidence building skills and the ability to communicate projects, as well as engaging in peer-to-peer feedback. There will be ample time for questions, book signings, and to discuss specific aspects of photography and the industry.

The tuition for this 3 Day Masterclass is $750 USD and includes continental breakfast and snacks. The tuition does not cover any transportation to and from Toronto, lodgings, or on the ground travel expenses. A computer will be available in each class and small-scale printing will also be available.

A non-refundable $100 USD registration fee will be required with your application. The balance of $650 USD is due within 7 days of acceptance in order to secure your spot. Once registration is complete with final payment, an introductory pdf will be sent to each student, with further details about the Masterclass.

For more information please contact
workshops@magnumphotos.com

<a href='https://magnumphotos.wufoo.com/forms/magnum-masterclass-may-2224-2015-toronto-canada/' target='_blank'>Apply Now</a>

Nikon Canada will be awarding three tuition-only scholarships to Canadian University or College students to attend the Masterclass. Qualified applicants will be selected by a Magnum and Contact representative based on the merit of their work and their artist statement. Proof of enrollment for the Spring 2015 semester, a letter of recommendation from a professor or photography industry professional, images from a book project in progress and an artist statement are required. Fully completed applications must be received by April 30th, 2015 by 6 PM Easter Standard Time. Scholarship recipients will be notified by May 8th, 2015.

<a href='https://magnumphotos.wufoo.com/forms/nikon-scholarship-for-magnum-masterclass/' target='_blank'>Apply Here</a>

About the Photographers:

<a href='http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=MAGO31_10_VForm&ERID=2K1HRGWPN2V8' target='_blank'>Michael Christopher Brown</a>
Michael Christopher Brown was raised in the Skagit Valley, a farming community in Washington State. Often using a camera phone as a primary recording device, his current work explores the ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In Sakhalin (2008), he captured the remote Russian island, while Broadway (2009) focused on New Yorkers amidst the financial crisis. He also put together a series of works from road and train trips throughout China (2009/2010) and, in 2011, documented the Libyan Revolution using a camera phone, exploring ethical distance and the iconography of warfare. A contributing photographer at publications such as National Geographic Magazine, Time and The New York Times Magazine, he was subject of the 2012 HBO documentary Witness: Libya. His photographs were exhibited at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Instituto Cervantes (New York), The Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), the Annenberg Space for Photography and the Brooklyn Museum. His forthcoming book, Libyan Sugar, will be published in 2014 by Twin Palms Publishers.

<a href='http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=MAGO31_10_VForm&ERID=24KL535BZY' target='_blank'>Mark Power</a>
For many years Mark Power’s work has been shown in numerous galleries and museums across the world, and is in several important collections, both public and private.
To date Power has published seven books: The Shipping Forecast (1996), a poetic response to the esoteric language of daily maritime weather reports; Superstructure (2000), a documentation of the construction of London’s Millennium Dome; The Treasury Project (2002), about the restoration of a nineteenth-century historical monument: 26 Different Endings (2007), which depicts those landscapes unlucky enough to fall just off the edge of the London A-Z, a map which could be said to define the boundaries of the British capital; The Sound of Two Songs (2010), the culmination of his five year project set in contemporary Poland following her accession to the European Union; Mass (2013), an investigation into the power and wealth of the Polish Catholic church; and Die Mauer ist Weg! (2014), Power’s first self-published book, about chance and choice set against a backdrop of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
In 2007 he tried his hand at curating. Theatres of War featured the work of five artists whose work is concerned with contemporary conflict and surveillance. It opened, appropriately, at Oskar Schindler's former enamel factory as the keynote exhibition of Krakow Photomonth, Poland.

Mark Power joined Magnum Photos as a Nominee in 2002, and became a full Member in 2007. Meanwhile, in his other life, he is the Professor of photography at the University of Brighton, a city on England's south coast where he lives with his partner Jo, their children Chilli and Milligan and their dog Kodak.

<a href='http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=MAGO31_10_VForm&ERID=24KL535NDZ' target='_blank'>Larry Towell</a>
Larry Towell's business card reads 'Human Being'. Experience as a poet and a folk musician has done much to shape his personal style. The son of a car repairman, Towell grew up in a large family in rural Ontario. During studies in visual arts at Toronto's York University, he was given a camera and taught how to process black and white film.

A stint of volunteer work in Calcutta in 1976 provoked Towell to photograph and write. Back in Canada, he taught folk music to support himself and his family. In 1984 he became a freelance photographer and writer focusing on the dispossessed, exile and peasant rebellion. He completed projects on the Nicaraguan Contra war, on the relatives of the disappeared in Guatemala, and on American Vietnam War veterans who had returned to Vietnam to rebuild the country. His first published magazine essay, 'Paradise Lost', exposed the ecological consequences of the catastrophic Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound. He became a Magnum nominee in 1988, and a full member in 1993.

In 1996 Towell completed a project based on ten years of reportage in El Salvador, followed the next year by a major book on the Palestinians. His fascination with landlessness also led him to the Mennonite migrant workers of Mexico, an eleven-year project completed in 2000. With the help of the inaugural Henri Cartier-Bresson Award, he finished a second highly acclaimed book on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in 2005, and in 2008 released the award-winning The World From My Front Porch, a project on his own family in rural Ontario where he sharecrops a 75 acre farm.


About CONTACT:
Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival is an annual event in May with well over 1500 Canadian and international artists and photographers exhibiting at more than 175 venues throughout the Greater Toronto Area. Founded as a not-for-profit organization in 1997 and now a charitable organization, the Festival is devoted to celebrating, and fostering the art and profession of photography, through a diverse range of programmes. As a leading proponent of photography, the Festival increases exposure and recognition for local, Canadian and international artists and is committed to advancing knowledge, creativity and innovation in photography. It stimulates excitement and discussion among a diverse audience that has grown to over 1.8 million. CONTACT is the largest photography event in the world, and a premiere cultural event in Canada.