AUT International Photography Workshop Dec 15th & 16th

Following on from the success of previous International Photography Workshops held by the School of Art & Design, this year’s photo workshop will be held by Hamburg based photographer André Lützen and by Auckland based photographer Harvey Benge. The annually held photography workshop held in the St Paul Street Gallery is a unique event which offers the opportunity to become acquainted with the practice of both nationally and internationally renowned artists and to discuss one’s own work facilitated by Andre and Harvey within the group of other participating practitioners.

André Lützen is a free lance photographer and has a long record as an artist (Krefelder Kunstmuseen, Kunstverein Ludwigsburg, Kunsthalle Hamburg) and as a teacher (Muthesius University, Kiel). André’s work deals with political issues like migration, exploitation of natural resources, globalisation and the heritage of colonialism. In his project Boule Fale (2001) he made research on the Hip Hop culture of African immigrants in Marseille, France, and tracked back their roots in the musical culture of Ghana. This project did not only unveil the difficult situations of African immigrants in post-colonial France, but is also an essay about how music gets re-appropriated, and identity and pride, damaged by slave trade and inhumanity, get re-established. In Perimeter I, II and III, André documented specific spots of the “Fortress of Europe”, places like the Spanish enclave Melilla in Northern Africa, the Eastern border of Turkey, and the Italian island Lampedusa; places, where different ethnicities mix, different religions and different value systems co-exist; places in-between, where it becomes dubious if this is still Europe or already another, unknown continent.

The workshop will be accompanied by an exhibition entitled Heart of Darkness. The works of this series will be shown for the first time ever. André refers to Joseph Conrad’s famous novel, published in 1902, about a journey on the river Congo in what was called Belgish Congo at that time. Francis Ford Coppola’s film on the war in Vietnam, Apocalypse Now, was loosely based on this novel, especially exploring the dark sides of so-called civilization in the figure of Kurtz. André travelled the Congo River in 2004 to find out more about the exploitation of the mineral Coltan, which is used in cell phones, CD players etc. and is found in the region between Congo and Rwanda, a region constantly shattered by war. Warlords of all sorts arrange deals with international companies, which take profit of the unstable situation. The question behind André’s photographic essay is, if things have changed since the era of colonization, or if colonization simply changed its name to globalisation; has colonization come to an end, or do now tribal chiefs and warlords colonize their own people, driven by greed and the prospect of quick money, offered by international companies, which have no interest in an improvement of the political and humanitarian situation. Harvey Benge behind Harvey’s recent photographic essay on China is also the question of what globalisation means. Harvey, who kindly has initiated the photo workshops at AUT, is an internationally active artist with a huge range of published books. In his series, he explores the contrasts and tensions between the traditional and the rapidly changing modern China, the extremes between poverty and wealth, between beggars and newly riches. His interest lies in the mundane, which may tell more about the impact of a globalised economy than any statistics. The workshop will be held at St Paul St Gallery, 34 St Paul St, Auckland City, on Saturday, December 15, and Sunday, December 16, 2007. 9am -5pm. For registration please contact neil.cameron@aut.ac.nz or phone (09) 921 9999 Extn 8626.

This above press release was received indirectly through the GRINZ free weekly e-newsletter for NZ photographers. You can register at http://www.grinz.co.nz or send your news to thenews@grinz.co.nz

Manukau School of Visual Arts is holding a series of practical hands-on workshops exploring digital photography and the hand-made print. Workshops include Preparation of Digital Images for contact print processes, non-toxic Photogravure and Hybrid Print.

I received the promotion for this in the mail yesterday and by the time I got to the website the November/December workshops were already full.  The next lot of workshops are being held in January but it seems you will have to book quickly. Here for more information