Polish Spring: 22nd-23rd June, Konrad Pustoła – “Think and Gaze” – Photography Workshops

Photography Workshops  with Konrad Pustoła

Sat-Sun, 22nd – 23rd June 2013| 2 pm – 5pm | art.andart | Drontheimer Str. 22/23, Berlin

The workshops is addressed to the community of Wedding district and all interested.
The meetings will be held in English.
Sign up here: [email protected], +49176 7122 5833

Admission is free

Photography is a primary tool mediating and magnifying the atrocities of war; since the beginnings of its existence – and with the invention of mass reproduction – photography has been used to influence the public opinion. Other types of early photographic “activist” projects are, among others, documenting poverty, child labour or governmental propaganda. In the last decades, when it seemed that photography lost its influence in the favour of television, the technological shifts created new opportunities. Electronic media created what was before unattainable – the capacity for a direct, immediate and global distribution of image, accessible to everyone connected to the Internet. However, as much as the new technologies expedite the message, they also blur and silence it in the multiplicity of voices. The question that arises is what is the actual potential offered by the new media to photographic image, and what are its capabilities in affecting social reality.

During the two days session, we are going to look for the answers to following questions:

• Can photography exert a real influence on reality?
• Why should we try to alter social reality through photography?
• Are the presupposed changes radical or is their character more discreet?
• What is the role of performative documentation in relation to the general potential of capturing?
• What are the most effective methods and strategies of working with photographic image?
• How is the age of electronic media causing the relationship between the photograph and the editor to change?
• How can we use new image-distribution channels to evoke a social change?

Konrad Pustoła (b. 1976) is a graduate of University of Warsaw’s Economics Department (2003) and Royal College of Art in London (2008). His projects are centered around the examination of the visual aspects of social and economic relations. He won the First Prize of the Polish Press Photo Competition for his Sanna series (2001). He has participated in many exhibitions, including The New Documentalists (2005) at the Center for Contemporary Art at Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, Bloomberg New Contemporaries (2008) in London, Storia, Memoria, Identitia (2009) in Modena, and PhotoEspana (2010) in Madrid. In 2010 he published Darkrooms, an album that won a prize at The Best Art Album and Catalogue Competition Reminiscencje.