teaching photography – a visual language
Inaugural ‘Photos Tell Stories‘ Photography Workshop
The Gambia, West Africa. December 2013
Award-winning Photographer: Jason Florio
Workshop Producer: Helen Jones-Florio
In partnership with the U.S. Embassy, Banjul, The Gambia
In January 2013, when resting in The Gambia, upon completion of our second expedition – ‘River Gambia Expedition-1055km source-sea African odyssey‘ (the first : ‘A Short Walk in the Gambian Bush-930km African odyssey‘ 2009), we had the great fortune to meet the Public Affairs Officer for the U.S. Embassy, Banjul – the capital of The Gambia – Josh Shrager.
After talking with length at Josh, we discovered that we all had a mutual love of photography and, almost one year later, the result of that serendipitous meeting – because we had previously discussed the idea of photography workshops in West Africa – is that we are now back in The Gambia, to teach our first photography workshop to a number of young Gambian students.
For our inaugural workshop, we will be teaching an introduction to photography to students from the ages of 14-19 years old – focusing on how to use the camera as a means of visual storytelling. The workshop will also be a cultural exchange – through exposing Gambian students to the work of international professional photographers and, in turn, showing the world how young Gambian’s see their country. Along with Jason presenting his work, we are honored to have a number of very accomplished photographers, whose work we greatly admire, who have contributed images : Manjari Sharma; Amber Terranova; Amy Toensing; Sari Goodfriend; Ryan Heffernan; Ben Lowy; Stefan Falke; Oskar Landi; Thomas Donley; Brandon Remler; Wayne Lawrence; Chris Bartlett; Robert Goldstein; Henry Jacobson; Heloise Bergman
In the classroom, through slideshow presentations and discussion, we’ll be covering a number of topics, including : a history of photography, digital camera operation, photography techniques, composition, and editing. On a practical level, the students will be given assignments to complete – the main one being ‘Home – the way I see it‘. As an example to aid the Gambian students with this assignment, we asked each of our professional photographers to provide us with images on the same theme. We received a incredibly diverse cross section of images from them – some very literal, others not so literal. More on that soon.
At the end of the daily workshops the students will have the opportunity to share their images with the whole village, projected onto a giant six meter inflatable screen – courtesy of the U.S Embassy – along with the work of our contributing professional photographers.
Jason has a long and successful career as a photographer and much of what he particularly enjoys shooting is portraiture, which he will be teaching as part of the workshop.
Access to the internet in The Gambia has grown exponentially over the last few years and, due to this, almost all of the kids we meet these days are using some kind of social media platform (such as Facebook) – it used to be that when we met kids on our travels here they wanted to give you their postal address, and vice versa. However, now the mantra is ‘will you be my Facebook friend?’ Therefore, we’ll be guiding the students on how to effectively use social media networks – as well as the power of blogging – to share their stories
The workshop will culminate in an exhibition and gala event, where the students work will be displayed through projection and print, to an invited audience – including family, friends and local dignitaries. Following the event, we hope to find an exhibition space to open the exhibit to the general public, inviting other students and their teachers from around the country to come along and view the work – and to talk to them about the possibility of participating in future photography workshops.
Further thanks…
Aside from our contributing photographers, we also wish to thank our partners in this venture, particularly to Josh Shrager – Public Affairs Officer/Acting Political and Economic Affairs Officer – and all at the U.S. Embassy, Banjul, for giving us the opportunity to make this workshop happen:
FujiFilm, USA; powerHouse Books, USA; Gambia Experience, UK; Foto Care, USA; Jekkah – African inspire clothing, The Gambia; Protronica Ltd, UK; SOL Laptops, Canada. See more here
We’ll be updating as regularly as a decent internet connection will allow us. To avoid missing what we’re up to, you can always subscribe to the blog (click on ‘Follow’ on the left hand column); ‘like’ our new ‘Photos Tells Stories’ FB page; follow us on twitter.
Here in The Gambia, we may well find the next Malick Sidibé
More news soon on the the start date for the workshops.
Jason & Helen
To find out more ‘about the Florios‘ please click on the link.
To view more of Jason Florio’s photography, please visit floriophoto.com
Please contact : helen.jones@floriophoto.com for more information about partnering and/or participation in future photography workshops.
PHOTOS TELL STORIES - documentary | filmmaking | photography | people | travel 