Description

Taking place in Paris from September 2024 till July 2025, the Creative Documentary and Photojournalism Course led by Magnum Photos and the Spéos School of Photography is now taking new applications.

During the nine-month course, Magnum and Spéos objectives are to make you learn all the tools to become a professional photographer. With Spéos, you will be supported by professionals of the field helping you improve your lighting, editing and printing skills as well as helping you understand how photographers’ rights work, how to budget a project etc. Meanwhile, Magnum will focus on making you understand the reality of the profession by meeting Magnum photographers, hearing their stories and the different experiences they encountered. You will learn how to edit and sequence your images, how to receive feedback and how to criticize your peers’ work while discovering what it is like to work on assignments and projects in the field, including on a tight schedule.

At the end of the course, you will participate in a group show at the Magnum Paris Gallery for which you will have specially worked for during the year. Not left alone, you will be supported by Magnum photographers, Stuart Franklin, Lua Ribeira and Antoine d’Agata who will follow you throughout the year to help you develop your personal project and discuss any challenges you might encounter.

 

Learn more about the course directly from the 2022-2023 Course by reading this article and listening to the recording session of the Online Open Day here.

Each photographer is expanding my vision of what is possible, both in the actual photographs but also the scope of what I can do professionally,” – 2022/2023 student.⁠

 

Course description:

(To view the full curriculum, visit the Spéos website)

 

Semester I: 1 day per week at the Magnum Photos Agency

The programme will be divided between practical assignments led by Magnum photographers, and informal meetings with industry professionals. Magnum staff will also share insights on how they work with photographers and present the various departments within Magnum such as commercial & editorial, cultural and gallery.


During the first semester, you will:
– Discover and understand the daily activities of a professional photo agency in general and Magnum Photos in particular
– Learn how to approach editors and commissioning editors
– Work on short assignments designed to teach them the skills of being a professional photographer

 

Semester II: 1 day per week at the Magnum Photos Agency

The second semester will focus on developing your personal project, getting feedback, editing and sequencing, culminating in the creation of an exhibition.

During the second semester, you will:

– Develop your personal project under the guidance of Magnum photographers: from research to completion.
– Exhibit a part of your personal project during the Collective show at the Magnum Gallery in Paris

Diploma

Creative Documentary and Photojournalism by Magnum Photos and Spéos
Titre de Photographe RNCP niveau 6 – code NSF 323 t

Fees

Price: €30,750

Contact and Application

For enquiries relating to this course please email info@speos.fr.

Click here if you wish to apply online on Spéos website.

About the Mentors

Stuart Franklin

Stuart Franklin combines a direct documentary-style with a strong personal vision. He has photographed some of the most important news events of the 21st Century as well as producing many acclaimed personal projects, exploring subjects relating to the Anthropocene. Franklin says his practice “repaints the boundaries of documentary in order to create a sense of freedom”. His core interest today is in producing work, mostly about nature-society relations, that is open to multiple interpretations.

It was in 1989 that Franklin took his acclaimed photographs in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, where a demonstration for freedom ended in a massacre. After that, he began to move away from news into magazine feature photography. Between 1990 and 2008 he photographed about twenty stories for National Geographic Magazine. During this time, Stuart decided to pursue a better theoretical understanding of some of the issues he confronted, by embarking on a period of academic study in 1995. He graduated with a first class degree in Geography from Oxford University and went on to complete his doctoral thesis there in 2001. Franklin was awarded a professorship in documentary photography in 2016.

He has been published by numerous global publications including The Guardian, Sunday Times Magazine, Geo, Art Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, National Geographic Magazine.

Franklin joined Magnum Photos in 1985 and has been a full member since 1989, serving as the agency’s elected president between 2006-2009.

 

Lua Ribeira 

Lúa Ribeira’s practice is characterized by its collaborative nature, extensive research and an immersive approach to her subject matter. She is interested in using the photographic medium as a means to create encounters that establish relationships and question structural separations between people.

Ribeira was born in 1986, in Galicia, northern Spain. She graduated in Graphic Design at BAU School of Design, Barcelona in 2011, and earned a first-class honours in a BA in Documentary Photography from the University of South Wales in 2016. Since graduating, she has continued her academic engagement as a guest lecturer at various universities, including the University of Westminster, University of the West of England, and Complutense University of Madrid.

Ribeira’s work has received several awards and honors, including the Firecracker Grant for Women in Photography, and the Jerwood/Photoworks award. Her work has been published in book form by Fishbar, London in 2017,  features in the publication Firecrackers: Female Photographer Now published by Thames and Hudson in 2017, in and Raw View Magazine‘s, “Women looking at Women” in 2016. Her work has been exhibited internationally in both solo and group shows in venues including Impressions Gallery, Bradford, Ffotogallery Cardiff, Belfast Exposed gallery, Beijing International Photography Biennale, and many more.

Other publications Ribeira’s work has been featured in include British Journal of Photography, Paper Journal, Refinery 21, AnOther, and Tate magazine. Selected commercial clients include Chanel, Carla Lopez handbags, Birmingham Botanical Gardens, and Wire Magazine.

She joined Magnum Photos as a nominee in 2018.

 

 

Antoine d'Agata 

Born in Marseilles, Antoine d’Agata left France in 1983 and remained overseas for the next ten years. Finding himself in New York in 1990, he pursued an interest in photography by taking courses at the International Center of Photography, where his teachers included Larry Clark and Nan Goldin.

During his time in New York, in 1991-92, d’Agata worked as an intern in the editorial department of Magnum, but despite his experiences and training in the US, after his return to France in 1993, he took a four-year break from photography. His first books of photographs, De Mala Muerte, and Mala Noche, were published in 1998, and the following year Galerie Vu began distributing his work. In 2001, he published Hometown and won the Niépce Prize for young photographers. He continued to publish regularly: Vortex and Insomnia appeared in 2003, accompanying his exhibition 1001 Nuits, which opened in Paris in September; Stigma was published in 2004, and Manifeste in 2005.

In 2004 d’Agata joined Magnum Photos and in the same year, shot his first short film, Le Ventre du Monde (The World’s Belly); this experiment led to his long feature film Aka Ana, shot in 2006 in Tokyo.

Since 2005 Antoine d’Agata has had no settled place of residence but has worked around the world.

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