British Journal of Photography - July 2015 by British Journal of Photography

BRITISH JOURNAL OF PHOTOGRAPHY

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15 CLASS OF 2015: MEET THE GRADUATES 30 WENDY EWALD 38 BLANK PAPER 46 ISSP 54 BELFAST SCHOOL OF ART 62 ECAL 70 DANISH SCHOOL OF PHOTOJOURNALISM 78 DUTCH MASTER: CORINNE NOORDENBOS 80 CYBERLEARNING 84 BEST OF CSC

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Volume 162 Issue No 7837 *CIPA Standards as of 12/2014

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CONTENTS

From the series People in the Dunes © Andrejs Strokins See page 46

AGENDA

07-12

BJP Breakthrough winners | Rencontres d’Arles festival | Musée de l’Éysée’s Regeneration3 | Products

PROJECTS

15-27

FEATURES

30-37

Wendy Ewald’s belief that photography can help raise a child’s social consciousness gave way to a lifelong collaboration with teachers around the world

38-45

Madrid’s Blank Paper School has been key to the success of the new wave of photographers coming out of Spain. Juan Peces investigates

46-53 ISSP, tucked away in the Latvian countryside, has made a name for itself with a leading programme of workshops delivered by acclaimed tutors. Evita Goze investigates

62-69

Top-notch facilities, housed in an exquisite building in Lausanne, on the shore of Lake Geneva, hosting lectures and workshops from renown photographers – École cantonale d’art de Lausanne could well be the perfect school, finds Lauren Heinz

With only two instructors on staff and a rotating array of visiting tutors, the Danish School of Media and Journalism on the east coast of Jutland produces more awardwinning photojournalists than any other college of journalism. Bill Kouwenhoven explains why

INTELLIGENCE

78-82

KABK’s Corinne Noordenboos | The rise of Phonar

54-61 Sectarianism has long-defined photography in Northern Ireland, but head of Belfast School of Art, Paul Seawright, tells Tom Seymour how the school is now unleashing Ulster’s untapped creativity

70-77

TECHNOLOGY

84-89 10-24mm f/4 R OIS XF Fujinon lens. See page 84

David Kilpatrick takes a look at the best of Compact System Cameras and what they offer

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PROJECTS GRADUATES

All images © Sebastián Bruno

Class of 2015 – part one of our pick of the best photography students graduating from colleges and universities in the UK and Ireland this summer. Interviews by Gemma Padley

SEBASTIÁN BRUNO www.sebastianbruno.com

The presence of Spanish literature’s greatest adventurer, Don Quixote, is felt throughout Sebastián Bruno’s ongoing project, Duelos y Quebrantos, loosely translated as pain and sorrow. The title of his series is also the name of a traditional dish from Castilla-La Mancha, made of bacon, chorizo and black pudding, and fed to Muslims who converted to Christianity in the late 14th century to prove their break with Islam. For the past 18 months, the 25-year-old photographer has been working in Castilla-La Mancha in central Spain, where his family moved from Argentina in 2002. It is also where Miguel de Cervantes’ novel, The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, takes place. While the project follows the steps of Don Quixote across the region, it is more about Bruno’s response to a place that he has never quite been

able to call home. “I visit my family regularly, but apart from them I have always felt rejected by everything and everyone in Castilla-La Mancha. The harshness of the landscape and the conservatism of the people force you to deal with the boredom that prevails, so I started to create this brutal and sincere visual interpretation of the region.” Photographing his family and the local township was initially a way to deal with the tedium of this “semi-rural environment”, he says, but it quickly evolved. “I wanted to take this project further by exploring the whole region, but I needed a framework, so I decided to trace the route of Don Quixote, the most complex, most significant character from this land. “La Mancha is a misunderstood land, and the more I walk around it, the less I understand it. Until now, my biggest challenge has been the landscape –

I struggle to deal with it. The only solution is to carry on, knowing that at some point I’ll get somewhere.” Bruno estimates he has visited more than 100 towns in central Spain, photographing landscapes and figures along the way that have caught his attention. Of most interest to him is the mundane – “it becomes a challenge for me to create something out of nothing” – because he believes it’s what makes the place extraordinary. This summer, Bruno will graduate from the University of South Wales, Newport, with a BA in documentary photography. He speaks fondly of his time there. “I feel privileged to have been part of the course; I don’t think I would have had the chance in Argentina to learn from such a diverse group of lecturers. Whether or not I become someone in photography, I will always be grateful to Newport.” BJP

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INTERVIEW

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INTERVIEW

SHOW & TELL In the late 1960s, Wendy Ewald put cameras into the hands of her subjects, paving the way for a visually-led approach to education. Laurence Butet-Roch travels to the home of one of the true pioneers of photography education and finds out how she set the foundations of her lifelong collaborative practice with educators

Follow the Hudson River for a couple of hours north of New York City, past the eccentric Bannerman Castle and Franklin D Roosevelt’s childhood home in the Hudson Valley, along winding roads and through woodland reminiscent of fairytales and promised land, and you’ll find the home of photographer and educator Wendy Ewald. Perched on a hill, her house is a sanctuary – a shrine to the many places she’s worked in and visited over the years. The spacious, bright rooms in her home are arranged around a Mediterranean-style courtyard, where two of her four cats rest in the warm sun. Ewald has just returned from teaching in Spain; the wilted flowers of a giant bougainvillea cover the floor, evidence of the passage of time. From the kitchen rises the aroma of potato and leek soup simmering away. Sitting around the island in her kitchen, watching the willowy, amiable 63-year-old prepare lunch, feels like being at home. Raising the first spoonful of soup to her lips, she reminisces about her earlier years in Detroit. “I actually started teaching – though it wasn’t conscious at all – before I became a photographer.” In the summer of 1967, racial tensions arising from systemic discrimination, marginalisation and poverty climaxed in Motor City. On July 23, police raided an unlicensed bar where 82 African-Americans were celebrating the return of two local GIs from the Vietnam War. The authorities detained everyone present, and this disproportionate measure, compounded with everyday racism, sparked riots that lasted

five days, resulting in the deaths of 43 people – 33 of whom were black – 182 injuries and the arrest of more than 7000 residents aged four to 82. A socially-minded high school junior in Detroit, Ewald, who supported the Civil Rights Movement, began working at a local settlement house that ran a programme initiated by reformist Jane Addams in the late 19th century. At the time, she had hoped to facilitate the integration of immigrant communities by providing a space where people of different social, cultural and economic background could exchange ideas. Though Addams passed away in 1935, her ideals gained momentum, and by the late 1960s they were instrumental in the fight against racial discrimination and segregation, especially in urban area such as Motown. “I was asked to help with lessons on black history,” recalls Ewald. “I was 17 at the time and the rest of the team was composed of experienced public [state] school teachers. For some reason, and I probably assigned myself this task, I took it upon myself to create visual representations of what we were discussing in class. It was before copy machines and I made collages using images from different eras.” The next summer, having graduated, she signed up to teach photography to Innu youth in Labrador, northern Canada, through the Quebec-Labrador Foundation. “While I was photographing the community with a 4×5, they were working with cameras donated by Polaroid. I soon realised the pictures they were making were more interesting than mine. Obviously,

they could get into situations I could hardly access, such as intimate family moments. But, more importantly, they came up with compositions that would never have occurred to me. These mirrored their relationship to the landscape and their homes. Nature was often more important than the physical houses in which they lived,” she says. After having showed them the basics of picture-taking, she tried to get them to use the camera in a deliberate way, giving them assignments such as documenting the things they liked about their community and what they wanted to change about it. One of her pupils, a 14-year-old boy named Benedict Michel, who created a particularly compelling series, became president of the Innu Nation (the indigenous people specific to Quebec-Labrador) later in life. “It seems there is a correlation between what he was able to see, show and write about as a teen, and what he did with his life,” says Ewald. During the following summers, while on break from her own training at Antioch College in Ohio, a small liberal arts college with an impressive list of Nobel Prize-winning alumni, Ewald continued to engage with other First Nations (the various indigenous people of Canada) – namely the Mi’kmaqs of Nova Scotia. “Teaching them was a big part of my life, but I didn’t really intend to keep doing that for the rest of it. At the time, this was my way of making projects, of collecting documents that allowed me to show people what was going on in places they were unfamiliar with,” she explains.

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BLANK PAPER SCHOOL The collective ethos is central to the success of the new wave of Spanish photographers, and nowhere is this more apparent than at the school in Madrid set up by Blank Paper as a “laboratory of constant experimentation”. Juan Peces makes a visit

Formed nearly a decade ago by a tight-knit group of visionaries, Blank Paper School is located on a tiny street that borders Madrid’s main thoroughfare – the colourful, bustling commerce of Gran Vía, which provides a diagonal axis across the city centre. Yet it is also very much a part of Malasaña, the once dilapidated neighbourhood that in the 1980s and ’90s gave rise to La Movida, the post-Franco counterculture of personal and artistic freedom. Now, according to critics, it has been invaded by gafapastas (hipsters) and fake modernos, but the area that surrounds the school still bears the traces of a place where Madrileños would go to take a walk on the wild side. Calle Nao is arguably the spiritual home of Madrid’s celebrated emerging photography scene, with a community of photobook worshippers, art lovers and photography devotees flourishing around the Blank Paper collective and school. Having formed the collective in 2003, Blank Paper’s founding photographers (Fosi Vegue, Julián Barón, Antonio M Xoubanova, Óscar Monzón, Ricardo Cases, Alejandro Marote and Mario Rey) decided they needed a physical space. They envisioned a breeding ground for new photographers – a meeting place for discussion, an exhibition venue and, above all, a centre of

knowledge, guiding students in their personal and professional growth. What began in February 2006 as a conceptual blank sheet with which to create a new approach to photography education – unaided (and therefore unhindered) by any official support – has grown into something that touches all aspects of the Spanish photography scene. In its nine years of existence, more than 2000 people have attended masters’ courses, seminars and workshops at Blank Paper School. “When I studied photography, I was aware of the gaps and shortcomings in the way photography was being taught,” says director and co-founder Vegue. “There was an excessive focus on technique and a lack of emphasis on vision and visual language. The only way to overcome that was to found a school based on the premise that photography is not a means to a profession but a path to nurture a personal creative project.” Vegue dislikes “the idea of a star photographer who comes to visit, lectures for half an hour, and then leaves without ever hearing from them again”. He says the link between teacher and student should be based on proximity and an exchange of ideas, giving way to a mutual ‘dependence’. “The student needs to feed off you, needs your guidance,

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PROFILE

your references; at the same time, you end up becoming completely involved in their project.” That kind of mentorship requires commitment, but Vegue also believes the teacher must have carte blanche. “Academic freedom is essential. Each teacher has a distinct personality. And within the framework of the syllabus, if Cases wants to take his students to the streets and set up a ‘circus of sorts’, for example, then that’s great. Xoubanova or Clavarino will make their own choices when it comes to transmitting their vision of photography, according to their personal views.” Every Blank Paper teacher is an author – in a constant creative process, says Vegue.“They are sharing the fruits of their process with their students,” while at the same time stimulating the student’s own work.

A little family

José Otero, who teaches photographic history and discourse at Blank Paper, says the school has “an open mindset, and an agile and dynamic structure that favours experimentation”. In his courses, he talks “about art, painting and other disciplines within their historical context” and tries to explain how photography has intermingled with different creative practices, such as performance, body art or

digital manipulation. He has complete freedom to teach students how to analyse photography by whatever means. “Blank Paper is like a laboratory,” he says. “If I want to take them to the countryside to interact with nature, I do it. If my colleague Iván del Rey [who teaches audiovisual language and multimedia] wants to take them to a church, or a museum, he does it. We, and the students, are encouraged to experiment.” What he values most about the school is “the balance between image and the process of thinking about the image, and the importance of pedagogy, with its political potential and aesthetic practice”. Otero’s course deals with the historical masters of photography, but it also teaches how history differs, depending on who writes it. “We discuss the relation between photography and politics, the importance of the visual document, the archive, genre theory, the autobiographical work, colonialism, the construction of knowledge, post-photography and image recycling.” Allan Sekula, Sophie Calle, Cindy Sherman and Christian Boltanski are a key part of the syllabus. “I tell students that it’s going to be a little trip, and a kind of micropolitics are put into action in the classroom,” Otero explains. “When they become aware of the ‘little collective’ they

belong to, I tell them that the first policy we enact is ourselves. I give them group assignments. Recently, we did a project on nature and walking, and the students themselves decided they wanted to create an exhibition. They had to negotiate, they had to confront their disagreements and deal with their egos – it was wonderful.” Otero also works with the concept of the personal archive. “When we do exercises in how to tell our own stories, students will explore themselves, their memories. Sometimes that’s painful, but it’s also a path for reconstruction.” Often “a little family” forms in the classroom “and we learn from each other”. Next year, Blank Paper will mark its 10th anniversary by introducing some specialist courses into the upcoming autumn semester. “In addition to our courses in project development and the photobook,” says Vegue, “we are creating a course on exhibitions, which will show photographers how to present their work and design a show, how to start a dialogue with curators, framers and venue managers.” Blank Paper is also devising a hybrid photographic history course with curators and academics including Nieves Limón, Javier Ortiz-Echagüe (both of Universidad Carlos III de Madrid) and Horacio Fernández (former

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PROFILE

INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SCHOOL OF PHOTOGRAPHY ISSP has established itself as one of the most formative workshop programmes in the world, despite its location in a remote corner of northeastern Europe, not only attracting leading photographers and experts to teach at its renowned summer school, but also nurturing homegrown talent. Evita Goze meets the team in Riga

For one week every summer, Pelči Palace, an imposing, red-brick structure built between 1903-04, tucked away in the middle of the Latvian countryside, surrounded by woodland and marsh, becomes home to more than 70 young photographers from all over the world. Enthusiasts and professionals from as far as South Africa, the US, Japan and Argentina gather at Pelči Palace in Kuldīgā, a village in western Latvia, to study under the tutelage of some of the best, most respected experts in the photography industry today. Six different workshops run simultaneously, and each participant creates a body of work under the guidance of tutors, who in past years have included Simon Norfolk, Rafal Milach, Todd Hido, Roger Ballen, George Georgiou and Vanessa Winship. Directed by Jūlija Berkoviča, the International Summer School of Photography (ISSP) was established in 2006 and has run every year since, together with an ever-expanding number of related activities, including a twoyear photography education programme in the capital Riga, as well as exhibitions, community

arts projects, masterclasses and artist talks. Throughout the years, Berkoviča has been the main driving force behind ISSP, helping to gather like-minded individuals who not only work collaboratively but who also, by working hand-in-hand, foster close friendships. I meet up with Berkoviča and two other ISSP staff members – Liāna Ivete Beņķe and Ieva Raudsepa – at their office, located at the back of a busy street in the centre of Riga. The idea to organise an international photography masterclass arose after Berkoviča – then pursuing photography in her spare time – participated in a similar workshop in Slovakia. “It was a really intense experience,” she recalls. However, when she went back two years later, everything had changed. “The workshop had become commercial; they accepted anybody who was prepared to pay. Everyone stayed in different accommodation, and the sense of community was no longer there,” she says. So she decided to set up a photography workshop based on what she herself would like to participate in. For Berkoviča, this meant the freedom to express

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herself creatively, to foster new friendships and experience personal and artistic growth. In the beginning, running the summer school was a sort of hobby for its organisers – each had a day job and other commitments, and none knew if they would manage to set it up again the following year. “People really liked it from the first year, and we just couldn’t say no.” By 2011, ISSP had turned into a professional organisation. With an established two-year education programme, their staff of four had expanded to 20, most of whom stepped in when needed, while the core team – Berkoviča, Beņķe and Raudsepa – work all year round.

Family circle

Beņķe, like many others involved in ISSP activities, started out as a summer school participant. “From the very beginning, I felt like I was part of an extended family – it wasn’t simply about going to a workshop, studying and then going back home. Everyone in Riga who is involved in ISSP is like part of a friendly gang, sharing common interests and an enthusiasm

to do something together. And I was happy to get more involved,” she says. At first, Beņķe helped out as a volunteer at the summer school, then later became more engaged, working with different projects, like Riga Self/Portraits, a participatory art project in which people from different neighbourhoods from within the capital learned to express their personal and local identities through selfportraits. They coloured in old family portraits, were invited into analogue photobooths, and posed for the camera in their living spaces. Students, tutors and organisers remain together for the entire session: they do everything together, eat together, study together, mingle together at the bar in the evenings, which is why so many of the participants experience that sense of family Beņķe describes. “During the week, you become very close to people, which might be different from a classical workshop, where you are together for a few hours and then everyone disappears in a different direction.” British photographer George Georgiou, who has twice taught at ISSP, agrees. “It has created

a strong community of photographers. In many ways, the workshop doesn’t end because people stay in touch; they can call upon one another and seek each other’s opinions long after the sessions end. I feel I am also a part of that community.” Georgiou first became aware of ISSP when his long-term partner, Vanessa Winship, was invited to teach. “When Vanessa came back, she couldn’t stop talking about what a great experience it had been, and although exhausted from the intensity of it, she was really enthused.” Over the following two years, Georgiou himself was invited to teach. “For me, ISSP’s biggest strength is that it brings together so many people, and the intensity of having to produce work to exhibit at the end in such an enclosed environment means ISSP has created the perfect workshop. Every year I see stronger and more successful work being achieved.” Intensity is also the first word that comes to mind for Polish photographer Rafal Milach, who jokingly described it as, “A labour camp with a human face.” Alongside designer Ania Nalecka, and bookbinder and

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BELFAST SCHOOL OF ART For too long sectarianism defined photography in Northern Ireland, focusing almost exclusively on documentary and reportage. But Paul Seawright, head of Belfast School of Art, hopes to unleash Ulster’s untapped creativity, long quashed by violence and division. Tom Seymour pays a visit to an institution quickly gaining international acclaim for the calibre of its students

PROFILE

We’re at the height of a child’s slide in a public park by the coast. It’s a bright day in Belfast, and the slide’s flecked red paint clashes with the green grass of the old country. The sea can be seen from the top of the slide, waves lapping at a spine of craggy rock, the horizon in the distance. “Late last night, a 28-year-old disappeared from a pub,” Paul Seawright writes next to the picture of the night of Tuesday, 03 April 1973. “It wasn’t until this morning that his body was found abandoned in a quiet part of the park by the coast.” Seawright, the current professor of photography and head of Belfast School of Art at the University of Ulster, knew the park from his childhood – it was close to where he grew up. He included the photograph in his 1988 series Sectarian Murder, alongside other sites of sectarian attacks from across the landscape of 1970s Belfast. Seawright paired his photographs with texts from newspaper reports at the time, then removed any reference to the Protestant or Catholic heritage of the men and women killed. Sectarian Murder laid the groundwork for Seawright, who over the next decade would become one of the most influential photographers to emerge from a city in which photography was and remains a dynamic and highly charged medium for social comment. “Seawright displayed the beginnings of Sectarian Murder in his degree show,” says Martin Parr, who guided the student Seabright through the undergrad course at the

University for the Creative Arts in Farnham, Surrey, and is now a visiting professor at Belfast School of Art. “I was moved to buy a print from him. You could just tell the guy had something special – he was determined, he got excited about the work. He had a good eye.”

The return home

Seawright almost yanks my arm off in a handshake when we meet in his office, then barely pauses for breath as he tours me through the open, airy art school he helped to create. “The project at Ulster has been about bringing together leaders in photography and photo education who share a vision for Irish photography. None of this has been about individuals or personal ambition – it has always been about two things only: photography and Northern Ireland. The whole team understand that, and it has worked because it was built with such a particular and shared agenda. For decades Belfast has been a photo destination for ambitious documentary photographers; our goal is to flip that and make Belfast a place known for creating innovative photography from within.” Seawright felt he had to leave Belfast to become a photographer. His photographs are now held in museum collections, including London’s Tate, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Art Institute of Chicago, and the International Center of Photography in New York.

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“I left Belfast to study photography at Farnham in the mid 1980s because there wasn’t an option to do so in Ireland at that time,” Seawright tells me. “Two things coincided that became instrumental for my own practice and ultimately for my teaching philosophy – both from my second year tutor at the time, Paul Graham. He had written for the first time about a need for British independent photography to think about subjective documentary, encouraging me to photograph my own city and draw on my experiences of growing up in a city as yet unable to project its identity. “Those three years travelling by bus and boat between Surrey and Belfast at the end of each term were frustrating and liberating in equal measure. The quasicolonial representation of Northern Ireland and the lack of infrastructure to support the development of alternative practices to counter that narrative became something that seemed too big to achieve for a small group of photographers educated in England.” Seawright has continued to carve out work while developing his academic career. In 2002, the Imperial War Museum in London asked him to make a series about the war in Afghanistan, and Seawright responded by photographing landscapes, year on year, devoid of soldier or citizen. One photograph features a collection of what might be large molehills, or graves, or exploded artillery. They are the result of

unexploded landmines, we discover, dug from the earth by hand because metal detectors can’t be used as there’s already so much metal in the ground from previous wars stretching back more than a century. Seawright showed how the very soil is organically corrupted by war. And he was well placed to take on such a task. Seawright grew up in a war, when the imagery of Belfast – the character and complexity of the city – was defined by outsiders. Belfast had become a proving ground for foreign war photographers; a young James Nachtwey and Gilles Peress made their names in the city, while Don McCullin and Philip Jones Griffiths spent the 1970s circulating between Vietnam and the urban sprawl of County Antrim. “An overlooked aspect of the Troubles [was] the constant sense of absurdity that attended normalised life,” wrote Sean O’Hagan, a photography critic at The Guardian, who also grew up in the city. These photojournalistic images, many undeniably brilliant, were the work of outsiders. They could not, and did not, represent the multivalent experience of the Northern Irish. Yet they defined Belfast for a generation. “I say to my colleagues often that the idea of teaching doesn’t come easily to me,” says Donovan Wylie, Seawright’s childhood friend and a member of Magnum Photos since 1998, who joined Seawright’s team as a photography lecturer in Belfast School in 2010. “But there’s no question that the motivation to teach, or one of

the motivations, is that you’re teaching kids from your home, your own place,” he says. “I remember being that kid – there was no photography education. There was no cultural representation. We were repressed, we were forced out. And for Paul to bring it back home, and for us to build it with him, has been phenomenal.” But in January 2007, after years spent working (first as lecturer, then professor and eventually as dean) in Newport at the legendary documentary faculty at the University of South Wales, Seawright came home to found and establish the first specialist academic photography faculty in Northern Ireland, and one of a handful in Ireland as a whole. “We were forced to tell our own stories through photography,” says Wylie. “A lot of the photography culture here came out of the images we had to look at every day. We had to find new ways of representing an experience that wasn’t one-dimensional. And that led us to be critical of the medium, and to think about it, and then fall in love with it.” The photography department of the Belfast School of Art is, in academic terms, a baby. And with only 80 undergrads on the BA course, 20 on the MFA and eight on the PhD currently in attendance, it’s surprising how significant the school already is in Britain’s photographic landscape. Yet its immediate influence is clear in the success of its graduates (including many who have featured in these pages over the past

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ECOLE CANTONALE D’ART DE LAUSANNE First-class facilities, housed in an extraordinary building on the edge of a lakeside city on the shore of Lake Geneva – oh, and there’s a programme of lectures and workshops from the world’s leading photographers, and fees are set at just €800 per term. Could ECAL be the perfect art college? Lauren Heinz reports

PROFILE

Few students completing a bachelor’s degree in photography in Europe – or anywhere in the world for that matter – would be subjected to a week-long stay in the woods, forced to survive without any modern conveniences, and tasked with responding to the experience by making artwork at the same time. Unless, that is, you are a student at ECAL (Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne) in Switzerland. That workshop was led by Thomas Mailaender, photographer, artist and prankster, and is just one of many that comprise ECAL’s impressive curriculum. ECAL was founded in 1821 and began life as a traditional academy, focusing on classical arts studies for decades. It was not until the 1990s that the college was reinvigorated by former director Pierre Keller, who ran it from 1996 to 2011. The school was divided into two sites at the time, one for the visual arts courses and one for the courses in communications. That all changed when Keller found a large abandoned industrial building – an old sock factory – in the suburbs of Lausanne and hired architects to convert it into a remarkable 15,000m2 space. The new campus opened in 2006 and brought all of ECAL’s students together

under one roof. Keller also instigated ECAL’s now renowned practice of inviting a star-studded list of guests to run photography workshops, drawing from his extensive contacts in the art world. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the college welcomed the likes of Nan Goldin, Stephen Shore, Sophie Calle and Larry Sultan. Unlike most schools in Europe, ECAL is relatively affordable – around €800 per semester – as it is funded by the Swiss government. The BA in photography is comprised of roughly 50 percent Swiss students, 40 percent French, and the remaining 10 percent from the rest of the world, and is taught in both French and English. Out of approximately 100 applications, around 20 students a year are accepted onto the course, making it a very select group that greatly benefits from the attention that can be afforded to such small numbers. Once portfolios are submitted, a shortlist is made and prospective students are interviewed for the few coveted places. Milo Keller, photography course leader since 2012 (and no relation to the former director), explains that portfolios are judged for signs of artistic integrity, however amateur the candidates’ practice may

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be. “I look for freshness in creativity and not something that is trying to redo some historical picture or to copy someone. I don’t care at the beginning if it’s technically perfect, but it has to have some language or some power,” he says. The course runs over four years and, thanks to the way the new space is set up, photography students intermingle with those studying graphic design, media and interaction design and industrial design – meaning they are taught how to make a layout, use fonts and build websites, so they gain a more general view on visual media. Along with that, they are taught a number of practical techniques, such as lighting, darkroom practice, digital retouching and how to use various cameras. “There is a big range in what we teach – from old-fashioned traditional techniques in black-and-white photography to the latest applications for smartphones,” says Keller. “We offer the widest range of possibilities and then it’s up to them to choose the technique they want to use to express their ideas.” The teaching philosophy at ECAL is both unique and practical, in a characteristically Swiss way. “At ECAL we are pragmatic – we start at 8am and finish quite late. The students

have to work really hard – we don’t think that talent comes from the sky,” explains Keller. “I think a lot of BA degrees are really into fine arts and we are a school of applied arts, so we have no shame in working and collaborating with a lot of big companies. For example, last semester we worked with BMW [10] and the students in second year photography made a lot of imagery for this specific project. At the same time they have lectures with artists, so they are at the cutting edge of applied and fine arts, both different yet complementary.”

Open doors

Bruno Ceschel, founder of independent publisher Self Publish, Be Happy, started as a visiting lecturer at ECAL in January. He travels to Lausanne monthly and meets with students individually or in groups to help them develop work for their final degree show in June. Ceschel, who has been aware of the college and the photographers who come out of it for some time, was struck by its physical setup: “The facilities are incredible. The building is beautifully designed inside, and it has a huge entrance used for exhibitions. There are these open-plan spaces

that students from the different departments use as a studio to make things, or for studying and researching. There is a sense of fluidity and collaboration between the different departments, which is probably prompted by these open spaces. “It’s quite normal at ECAL for a photography student to be working with a student from graphic design on a publication. It’s sort of encouraged, but I feel that it’s facilitated by the way the school is laid out. I think it helps that they are in this slightly remote place – there’s not much around the school itself. I’ve never seen any school like it – the size of it, the equipment, the studios and the access to workshops.” This sentiment is echoed by Mailaender, who remarks in ECAL Photography, a book published in 2013 to coincide with an exhibition of the school’s recent photographic work: “ECAL is one of the rare schools where I think it is possible to imagine a project and carry it out in conditions as close as possible to high-level professional reality. Students and professors alike have the necessary tools to be able to complete what they have in mind.” In addition, most students leave ECAL with real contacts in the commercial world, and some even start

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PROFILE

DANISH SCHOOL OF MEDIA AND JOURNALISM Located on the east coast of the Jutland peninsula in Denmark, it has only two on-staff instructors and an array of visiting industry professionals – and it produces more award-winning photojournalists than any other college of journalism. So what is it about this small Danish institution that sets it apart from the rest? Bill Kouwenhoven offers a personal insight

“I remember my time there as intense. It was hard work, and we experimented a lot, but I also remember it was a lot of fun,” says awardwinning photojournalist Laerke Posselt of her time at the Danish School of Media and Journalism in Aarhus, Denmark. “Because of the tough application process, the ones who get in are students who really want it, who worked for it, and who have the drive it takes.” Year in and year out, this small school on the east coast of Jutland has produced more prize-winning photojournalists than any other photography school – including Mads Nissen, whose image Jon and Alex, a gay couple sharing a moment of intimacy in a flat in St Petersburg, won World Press Photo Picture of the Year 2015. For a small school with only two permanent teachers – Søren Pagter and Mads Greve – and a rotating crew of Danish and international experts in the field, the school seems to have a secret formula for inspiring students to produce passionate photojournalism and personal documentary projects. “We start out by choosing the right students,” says Pagter. “That’s the first step. We get lots of applicants, but we test the ones who apply, look at their portfolios, and test them when they are out shooting. We get very good students right from the start.” From the near 140 applicants for the four-year BA degree programme, the school selects some 16 students after a rigorous twotiered entrance exam that involves both portfolio reviews and writing samples designed to test social, political and historical awareness, as well as writing skills. Applicants must also be fluent Danish speakers. Once admitted, students are

sorted into small groups of about four, where, for the first semester, they are taught journalism ethics alongside print, radio and multimedia, with an emphasis on storytelling. Camerawork is not introduced until the second semester.

In earnest

A series of modules begins, covering all aspects of the trade, in keeping with the ethos of a school founded in 1992 that has its roots in the vocational training of journalists for the Danish newspaper industry. For photographers, that includes lighting, portraiture, sports photography and editing, in addition to other tools of the trade. Students must then seek out their own assignments, putting together stories in an environment resembling the newsroom of a major newspaper such as Politiken or Berlingske. The students critique each other’s work and learn by sharing experiences and contacts. As they move along in their third and fourth years of study, the students work on individual projects and take up apprenticeships at various newspapers around the country, where they pursue their own stories in a professional environment. However, every few weeks they return to school for group critiques of their work and consultations with tutors. International student Claudia Gori describes the galvanising effect this can have: “The multiple deadlines do drive you crazy, but they are actually good training for the real world. But more important is learning how to work in a team. The sharing process, not only ideas but also the actual work, is an important part of almost every workshop at the school, and I discovered

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INTERVIEW

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INTELLIGENCE

Two models of photography education: one taught remotely, drawing on students' knowledge to create a two-way dialogue; the other an integrated method, pioneered by a Dutch woman who retired this spring

Corinne Noordenbos during discussions with a team of photography lecturers at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. Image © Deen van Meer

A woman of influence You may never have heard of her, but Corinne Noordenbos has been a powerful influence, nurturing new talent in The Netherlands. Taco Hidde Bakker profiles her and her new successors This spring, one of the most influential figures in Dutch photography education officially retired, bringing to an end a distinguished career that has been barely recognised outside her home country, though you probably know her work through her legacy – a

succession of celebrated Dutch photographers who have studied under her, many of whom are noted for their particular attention to making photobooks. Corinne Noordenbos has headed up the photography department at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague since 2005, following a career at the HKU University of the Arts Utrecht spanning two decades, during which she developed photography as a main subject and later installed documentary photography as a specialisation course. Her list of former students reads like a roll call of Dutch photographers recognised the world over – Rineke Dijkstra, WassinkLundgren, Viviane Sassen, and many more.

In late April, the academy marked her achievements at an event gathering together colleagues and students past and present. It was organised by the department that includes a photographer, lecturer and former student of Noordenbos among its staff, Lotte Sprengers, who will now jointly head it up with another Noordenbos alumni, Rob Hornstra, one of the most significant figures to emerge from The Netherlands in the past decade, with his ‘slow journalism’ approach and innovative use of new media to fund and distribute his work. The “grand lady of Dutch photography education” was praised for her accomplishments, with Donovan Wylie, lecturer at

Belfast School of Art (with which Noordenbos arranged an exchange programme), praising her intellect, her work ethic, as well as her ability to bring the best out of her students.

Total photography

The Royal Academy is one of a number of renowned photography courses in The Netherlands, including the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, HKU University of the Arts Utrecht, AKV|St Joost in Breda, Minerva Art Academy in Groningen, alongside private schools such The Fotofactory in Amsterdam, and post-graduate courses at the Rijksakademie and Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam, and de Ateliers and Jan van Eyck Akademie, which are focused more

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Corinne Noordenbos lecturing students on an annual field trip to Rencontres d’Arles photo festival. Image © Marga Rotteveel

broadly on the visual arts but have educated excellent photographers and photobook-makers. Given a free hand to improve the curriculum at the Royal Academy, Noordenbos re-organised the programme, introducing specialists from related fields such as graphic and interactive designers, whose elective classes gave students the tools to realise larger and more ambitious projects. Her approach could be described as an integrated method: the photographer, whether working in fiction or documentary (the two options students are given), is tasked to play many chess boards at the same time. It’s analogous to the Total Football philosophy brought into practice by Dutch coach Rinus Michels in the 1970s, in which each player must have ability, but must also be adaptable, able to switch between multiple positions and formations on the field. Within a decade, Noordenbos helped to raise the status of the Royal Academy’s photography department from ‘Good’ to ‘Excellent’ (the highest grade possible) – the latter qualification acquired in the latest round of accreditation in the summer of 2014. Her teaching methods, her educational philosophy, and her

advice to young photographers is legendary. Noordenbos, who is also a photographer herself, is a great champion of the photobook and its role and significance for education. So it’s not surprising, perhaps, that Martin Parr and Gerry Badger’s third and latest volume of The Photobook: A History includes seven books made by former students of Noordenbos, among which are three graduation projects: Communism & Cowgirls by Rob Hornstra (2004), Empty Bottles by WassinkLundgren (2007) and Viviane Sassen’s Flamboya (2008). Noordenbos believes too much emphasis is placed on graduation shows in countries such as France and the UK, and instead stresses the importance of a more rounded, vocational approach that prepares students for professional life. Dutch graduates are often a step ahead of their international peers because they have given thought and shape to the presentation of their work and the audiences they are trying to reach. She also stresses teamwork, saying: “If they want to play solo, they need a band playing around them.” Plainly put, they need to be able to communicate effectively with other professionals within

a larger project, and that’s why she organised the course around what she calls ‘group dynamics’, avoiding what she believes is the usual mistake within art education, giving exclusive attention to individual development. One of the second-year classes during a so-called ‘project week’ abroad revolves around collaboratively producing a magazine, for which students need to co-operate on many levels and make arrangements with organisations outside the college, such as printers and sponsors. Within the scope of a working week, immediately following the project week, a magazine is realised and sometimes printed and offered for sale – a daunting task, but one they are well prepared for.

By the book

The close relationship in The Netherlands between graphic design and photography dates back to the 1930s, when designer/ photographers Piet Zwart and Paul Schuitema were commissioned to produce commemorative company photobooks. From 1945 to 1968, socially engaged photographers and graphic designers shared a single professional confederation, the GKf

(Society for Art Photographers). In those years, especially during the postwar economic boom on the cusp of the 1950s and ’60s, progressive factory directors asked photographers, writers and designers to make photobooks about the achievements of their industries, giving them almost complete artistic freedom. The tradition of close and experimental collaboration between photographer and designer is reflected in the art academies’ large output of books. But despite the close proximity of photography and graphics courses within Dutch art schools, students often choose to work with external, professional designers. “A student making his first book prefers to work with a photobook designer who knows his trade,” explains Noordenbos, adding: “We encourage students to give careful consideration to what their intentions are, and whom they want to address with their projects.” Nowadays, societal and technological changes can have a swift impact, so she believes in preparing students to adapt. That’s why one of the Royal Academy’s mission statements is that it’s the students’ talents which need developing, rather than their talents. Talent is but a vehicle for further development. “Ultimately, the academy expects students to be flexible, think creatively, be able to work across disciplines, take initiative and develop selfconfidence,” says Noordenbos. It’s a formidable list, which she admits can be intimidating, particularly for younger students. “The intensive programme leaves little room for solving any of the unforeseen problems that might arise in their private lives during the course of studying.” Because expectations run high, the Royal Academy sets thorough entrance exams for its four-year BA, the result of which is a relatively high pass rate for final graduates. They want to figure out the wider interests of potential students: their willingness to learn, whether they aim to make a social impact with their work beyond the photography community, and not least whether they demonstrate visual flair and a vision of how to use the medium. Of her two successors, Sprengers has already worked with Noordenbos for nearly a

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INTELLIGENCE

[Left to right] Joint interview with Corinne Noordenbos, and her successors Rob Hornstra and Lotte Sprengers, at ‘live magazine’ event Donkere Kamer (The Dark Room), in Amsterdam, in May. Image © Bas de Meije

decade, becoming the educational co-ordinator and a lecturer at The Hague in 2006, gaining an intimate knowledge of the ‘integrated method’. The other, Hornstra, has developed his own innovative strategies for fundraising, crowdfunding and engaging audiences for his work, such as The Sochi Project (2009–13), a long-term slow journalism approach undertaken with writer and filmmaker Arnold van Bruggen ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics. Noordenbos expects his methods and the network he brings will ensure some kind of continuity for her approach, while at the same time expanding upon the international dialogue that the academy wants to expand. Although Hornstra has relatively little teaching experience, he is currently lecturing at the University of Lucerne in Switzerland and has worked extensively with apprentices over the past decade. Sprengers is somewhat modest about her teaching expertise; training interns has brought her teaching experience at an individual level, which, albeit the academy’s focus on group dynamics, is also essential. “My own student experience has been formative for my ideas

about what good education entails,” Hornstra says. As her successors are both former students, and they appreciate each other’s work, they don’t expect any difficulties as joint leaders of the department. And there are benefits, because both want to continue working as photographers while developing assignments for the students in the context of official commissions. Other plans include making the course more international, even though it is already taught entirely in English, attracting more foreign students, and getting international assignments and placements for students to work on. Sprengers adds that she also wants to bring the part-time BA up to the same level as the full-time course, promoting it abroad and keeping it affordable. The pair aim to broaden the path already paved by Noordenbos, while upholding the original Latin meaning of the verb ‘to educate’ (ex- + ducere) – to ‘lead out’, and thus bring it out into the world. The task for the photography educator is to fully prepare students for their career, with all its potential pitfalls, instilling the importance of creating personal networks. BJP www.kabk.nl

The virtual classroom Online education has evolved to the point where entire degrees are delivered by remote. But, says Gemma Padley, the real revolution is in rethinking the relationship between teacher and student At the mention of e-learning, what may spring to mind are unruly, clunky forum pages harking back to the earliest days of the internet, or the archaic digital noticeboards on which educators pin course notes. But communication technologies have come a long way in 20 years, and courses that draw on the possibilities of the web are rapidly becoming integral to the modernday teaching of photography. Colleges the world over have long made use of the web as part of their teaching across all disciplines, and in the UK, the Open University is perhaps the most wellknown institution to champion distance learning. Its Open Learn programme, for example, offers access to content from Open University courses, which it makes freely available worldwide for non-commercial educational use via a Creative Commons

licence. And in the US, some of the most prestigious universities have offered classes online free of charge. These well-documented Massive Open Online Courses (or Moocs, as they are known) have been around for a few years, offering participants from almost anywhere in the world the chance to learn for free. With regard to photography, the internet has given rise to hundreds of independently run courses, mostly offering individual tuition around the more practical aspects of technique. But there have also been significant developments in higher education in recent years, some embracing the democratic tendencies of the internet beyond the usefulness of being able to deliver a curriculum anytime, anyplace. Phonar (or Photography and Narrative) is a free and open undergraduate photography class run by photographer and educator Jonathan Worth at Coventry University. Its roots are in Picbod (Picturing the Body), a class conceived by Worth in 2008 while he was teaching at the university part time. Continuing to this day under the guidance of Worth’s former teaching assistant Matt Johnston, Picbod (which was also available as an iPhone app) was originally offered to a group of students at the university, allowing them to log in remotely. Phonar works in a similar way. After a single class, which is taught to around 20 people onsite at the university during the autumn term, the course continues over 10 weeks between October and December. Classes are made available for free to interested parties via the internet, with lectures and materials shared using RSS feeds. Past speakers and current supporters include Fred Ritchin, Stephen Mayes and David Campbell – people who are actively tackling and solving some of the most important problems facing photographers today, says Worth. In one term, up to 35,000 people tuned in remotely, he says – “that’s 35,000 sets of eyeballs on the work of every student in my class. Those sorts of opportunities – in terms of getting your message out or employability – can’t be bought.” Worth makes it sound simple – “all I did was put my classes on a blog, play videos on YouTube and invite people to tweet and share

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The best of CSCs Size and weight is just the beginning. Compact System Cameras have matured to challenge – and in some respects improve upon – SLRs, and an array of lenses and accessories have flourished alongside. David Kilpatrick provides a guide to the best that CSCs have to offer

TECHNOLOGY TECHNOLOGYLENS REPORT TEST

With their electronic viewfinders, limited lens ranges and overtly retro styling, Compact System Cameras were initially regarded as a new set of toys for enthusiasts stepping up from fixed-lens models, and anyone else tired of lugging around weighty SLR systems in their leisure time. But not any more. The flight of professionals from midsize DSLR systems to CSC has been accelerated as these smaller mirrorless ranges mature. What’s more, where pro-spec cameras once debuted the latest advances and technologies, the newly developed architecture of CSCs has encouraged fresh innovation. This segment of the camera market is also the only one that’s really growing, and the competition between makers is more real and more pronounced, so expect to see much of their energy focused on this area for a long time to come. Selling up to switch to a CSC seems to have affected the high-end consumer and semi-pro DSLR market most, leaving the relatively low sales of the most professional DSLR kit like Canon’s 1DX and the Nikon D4S only slightly affected. And for anyone building a new camera system, the high specifications and low cost of entry have real appeal – £1000 will get you a Fujifilm, Sony, Olympus or Panasonic kit able to take on almost any challenge. It’s true that system lenses can be expensive if you want the best autofocus performance, but many now prefer to use manual focus and get prime optical quality at a fraction of the price from independent and legacy glass. What gaps remain in systems, and what shortfalls can be found in performance, are disappearing by the month.

Cameras Olympus OM-D E-M5 MkII

The first OM-D-style 16-megapixel Micro Four Thirds format body from Olympus was the E-M5; the E-M1 followed as a significant upgrade, and the E-M10 a ‘lite’ variant. Now the top of the range is the E-M5 MkII [1], including a prograde 1/8000s mechanical shutter, microphone input and the splash-proof magnesium body of the E-M1, along with viewfinder resolution and general performance upgrades to match it. The E-M5 MkII also introduces one potentially game-changing feature: the sensor-based, five-axis stabilisation has been adapted to allow subpixel-level shift between multiple exposures combined in processing to create a single 40-megapixel image. It’s a mode to be used on a solid tripod because of the precision involved, most suited to architecture or small static subjects for catalogues. The TruePic VII processor also handles 10fps sequences (11fps in silent mode, which also has a 1/16000s electronic shutter), 800 autofocus points on the sensor, 77Mbps 1080 movie recording at 60/50/30/25/24p, and the most advanced live composite mode yet. This enables you to shoot many exposures and observe the result as an image preview. Now we await the logical arrival of an OM-D E-M1 MkII. www.olympus.co.uk

Sony A7 MkII

Unlike Olympus and Fujifilm, which have a one-size-fits-all, 16-megapixel sensor for all their models, Sony gives professional full-frame users

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TECHNOLOGY CAMERA TEST

a choice. The original A7 of 2013 is 24 megapixels, with the 36-megapixel A7R above it, and the 12-megapixel A7S below. The A7 MkII [2] adds the world’s first in-body, 24×36mm sensor-based, five-axis stabilisation to an improved A7. With the ‘R’ model definitely best suited to tripod use and commercial work (there’s no AA filter), and the ‘S’ combining high ISO up to 409,600 with superior movie capture, including output of 4K to external devices, the MkII is a well-optimised all-rounder. It lacks the completely silent shutter mode of the S, but has a quiet, shock-free first-curtain electronic option. Sony also revamped the A7 body design, with an improved grip, shutter release, control wheels and function button layout. No other maker has yet announced a rival full-frame mirrorless system, and most other camera lenses can be adapted to fit. The A7 MkII can be programmed with focal length manually to apply optimal stabilisation, and may, it’s rumoured, get an E-M1 MkII-style multi-shot 60-megapixel resolution through a future firmware upgrade. www.sony.co.uk

Fujifilm X-T1 Graphite Silver

The support given by camera makers can be judged by their approach to firmware updates. Fujifilm has a sterling reputation, and its decision to let owners of the original X-T1 upgrade to match a new model cemented this. The X-T1 Graphite Silver Edition [3] is not just a different colour and finish; it adds a Classic Chrome film look (carefully named, as it’s not a

Fujifilm slide film being emulated), a high-speed 1/32000s electronic shutter with a silent mode, a ‘natural view’ mode for the EVF, which emulates an optical finder, and adjustable ‘vividness’ levels for both the EVF and rear screen. This magnesium body, 16-megapixel X-system is the top of the range, but original X-T1 buyers have not been kept in the dark. Fujifilm announced a free firmware upgrade, giving its camera Graphite Silver specs, including silent shutter and 1/32000s. And, as many have said, it’s like having a new camera for nothing. In December 2014, both X-T1 models were given 10 further major functional improvements through another firmware release. This approach has made its system the first choice for many professionals wanting a lightweight, highperformance backup system. www.fujifilm.eu/uk/

Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH4

With the acclaim given to Olympus, Sony and Fujifilm’s silent shutter, still shooting modes, Panasonic has been able to claim something just as useful to news, PR, wedding and events photographers. Its Lumix GH4 [4] can shoot 4K movies with direct in-camera storage, unlike the Sony A7S, which requires an external recorder. It can also capture (or extract) 4K-resolution still frames from uninterrupted video shooting. A 4K frame is capable of a full-page reproduction in this magazine or a doublepage spread in any newspaper. For commercial work it’s a very high-quality half-page with the potential to crop. The GH4 has a 4K Photo Mode

optimising every frame of a movie for better stillimage use, including full Exif data, at 3840×2160 pixels – a 1.2× crop from the full sensor’s 4608×3456 pixels. It has a 30fps mode, which can be used with control over shutter speed and aperture for action-freezing sequences. For the social or news photographer, GH4 movie shooting in this mode captures subtle changes of expression and poise without any of the noise associated with motordrive bursts. The footage is also a future-proofed 4K movie clip. www.panasonic.com/uk/

Mirrorless alternatives

With the Micro Four Thirds system (Olympus and Panasonic) limited to its 17.3×13mm sensor and even smaller crops for HD1080 and 4K, three mounts designed originally for APS-C that have the potential to handle 24×36mm sensors. Sony has already done this, Fujifilm could do so, and the new Leica T system measures up as a close match in all respects except price. The Canon EOS M and Samsung NX systems have limitations in the registration distance and lens throat diameter, ruling out full frame. Samsung’s NX1 deserves a mention as a potential pro-worthy, 28-megapixel, 1.5× sensor model with rugged body and two new fast-focusing, high-specification lenses. Nikon’s 1 range has the underwater-friendly AW-1 with its matching kit lens as the most attractive in this 2.7× factor system, and the final ILC format is the tiny Pentax Q7, which now has a 4.6× factor (the original models had a 5.5× factor). There’s an argument for investing in either of

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