Workshop: Photography as a Negotiation Space

The aim of the workshop is to produce the sixth episode of a visual guide to architecture and town planning in the Mendrisiotto region: from large logistical centres to large infrastructures, from natural landscapes to meeting places or cultural heritage sites, to the most significant architectures to be brought to the attention of a wider public through our photographic narrative. The workshop will include a journey through the territory, in a photographic exploratory "walking tour" and photographic fieldwork in institutions and logistic centres. We will have the opportunity to define the life of a photograph and its various declinations with attention also to the themes of its role within an archive, analysing its codes, structures and economic and social functions. We will also make a brief excursus on the history of the different shooting technologies (with various types of cameras, lighting and printing), on photography exhibitions, in particular relating to architecture (starting with the great ideological exhibitions of the 1920s and 1930s), and on the editorial graphics linked to the book of artist's photographs. The results of the photographic fieldwork and selections made will be collectively edited in real time and the students will produce an exhibition in the form of a sculptural photo book at the end of the workshop. 

To study the operational modes related to photography, starting from the shooting and looking at the methods and the technical and cultural transformative value by tracing the production chain, both practical and conceptual, necessary for an artistic and documentary use of this social medium.

In presence

How to produce a sculptural photographic book through collective work in its various stages: conceptual, shooting, printing and materialisation. Photography as part of technological and industrial development, as an information tool, as part of "anthropological" cultural codes (still life, industrial, architectural, advertising, journalistic photography, etc.). Archives, methods and economic and historical implications.

Final critiques.