This CAMP session concerns telling tales about the land, and our relationship to it. It’s about using photography and text to reveal stories about the local environment and community, and the relationship that we have to the landscape and the ecosystems within it; reflecting back onto ourselves, and considering the possibility of revealing something about our human nature and what that means in today’s world.
During the workshop we will research, explore and photograph the relationships between humans and nature in the stunning landscape of the Haute Couserans mountains. We will meet local people, explore their relationships to the land, examine the effects of human life on the landscape and consider how these effects might appear as traces or indications of human experience. We will find local stories about the landscape and devise ways to weave these into our picture making. We will set stories in stone, create modern myths about this place, and the humans who exist within it, or respond to it.
We will explore new and innovative ways of combining photography with other mediums and approaches to tell stories, and at the end of the workshop we will produce a book that includes the work we’ve created. This will be a book of modern myths, an assemblage of folk tales about the essence of human nature in Aulus les Bains today.
Outside of the project we’ll hold portfolio reviews, informal discussions, on-to-one coaching sessions, film screenings and other activities. This is a unique opportunity to gain skills, refine your work, make contacts and move your photographic practice forward.
Anna Fox has been working in photography and video for almost thirty years. Influenced by the British documentary tradition and US ‘New Colourists’, Anna’s work first emerged alongside contemporaries such as Martin Parr and Paul Graham in the late 80’s. “Work Stations”, published by and exhibited first at Camerawork in 1988, critically observed London office culture in the mid Thatcher years. Later work documenting weekend wargames (titled Friendly Fire) was shown in the exhibition Warworks at the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Netherlands Foto Institute and the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography. With solo shows at The Photographer’s Gallery (London), The Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago) and others, and work included in international group shows such as Through the Looking Glass, Centre of the Creative Universe: Liverpool and the Avant-garde and How We Are: Photographing Britain, Anna is a key figure in modern photography.
Anne McNeill is one of the most influential figures working in photography in the UK. As Director and Curator of Impressions Gallery, one of the UK’s leading venues for contemporary photography, Anne has curated some of the most exciting exhibitions of photography in Europe over the last two decades, including shows by Paul Reas, Murray Ballard, Joy Gregory, Trish Morrissey and, of course, Anna Fox. Prior to joining Impressions in 2000, Anne was the Artistic Director of Photo 98, the UK Year of Photography and in 1995 founding Director of Photoworks, the national commissioning agency for photography, based in Brighton. Anne is a member of the “Academy”, a group of photography experts who nominate candidates for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, and since 2011 is a nominator for Prix Pictet, the global award in photography and sustainability. Since 2016, Anne is also a nominator for the Hasselblad Foundation International Award.