workshops

umberta

when i met umberta genta  four years ago, i just wanted to take her picture...and i did....quite a few as i recall at the tuscany workshop (tpw.it) where i often teach in the summer....umberta was a student in another class, but i wanted her as a "model" for the project i was doing on portraits of women...she was perfect...natural...i said nothing,  and umberta moved and blended and even though i had the camera, she made the picture...

but umberta is not a model...she is a photographer of models...this italian photographer  now does fashion work in london and trys to combine her personal work with the professional...

the black & white photograph below was taken in my apartment...but, i have never seen umberta in new york...she and her friend daria stayed in my place for a  couple of weeks  about three years ago when i was on assignment somewhere...

umberta is very serious about her work.....and her work will take her where she wants to go....

cristina

she works as a commercial photographers assistant in catania.....she wants to "break out" and do her own work......cristina ferramo has lots of ideas and is just trying to figure out which way to go....in our sicily class she started out doing work with children's street games and ended up tying in all in with teenage love and lost love....she was always thinking thinking and wrote me a long letter in the middle of the workshop about her overall intent as a photographer... cristina struggles with what we all struggle with....how to take her feelings and her vision "out there" in way that makes sense to her and possibly to others....i will stay in touch with cristina as i do with most of my students....i want to see what happens to cristina and her work.....she has the ability to go "inside" and her photographic "touch" is just right....show me more cristina, show me more.....

paolo

paolo sollazzo is a poet...when i met him, the first words out of his mouth was a poem....i did not understand the poem, for i speak no italian and paolo speaks no english...but by week's end we communicated with each other perfectly... i have had many students over the years, but never anyone quite like paolo.....at first, i thought he would perhaps cause a problem with the class, for paolo never stops talking and takes up a lot of "space"...he also never stops shooting....i mean NEVER....paolo's non-stop chatter and equally non-stop shooting style ended up bonding the class rather than causing a problem... paolo is 50+ years old....he has an administrative job of some kind in rome....he has no clue whatsoever about how to work his camera....and i did not try to teach him....i could see that his "peter pan" personality and his instinctive use of light and moment and composition should not be messed with.... i decided to just let him go....any tinkering with what he was doing would have "ruined" him...he was already where i try to get the rest of my class to go....he was free...he was totally himself....he was not self conscious....i figured he could shoot randomly and freestyle this week and he could learn about "photography" some other time..

new student work sicily

nick yoon

paolo minzi

chiara tocci

kathy suder

lana bortolot

gianluca marucci

jordi ferrando i.arrufat

renaud visage 

giulio rimondi

sicily processions

 

when i first met giulio during the easter processions in sicily last
year, he was having trouble with his camera tech-wise....he just did
not have much experience...but he was not shy to admit it....within a
couple of days he was doing some truly instinctive work.....and i will
take instinctive over technically proficient any day....

giulio rimondi, from bologna, italy, is a really young renaissance
man....at 22 he has traveled all over the world...speaks four
languages.....he plays classical violin and writes his own music for
guitar....he is way way to well read for me and is a man of "arts and
letters" in the old style....anyone who meets giulio knows he  will do
something very special with his life.....

when giulio was shooting with me in new york, his project was titled
"scene 22"....22 pictures...22 little vignettes of his first
impressions of new york as an adult......for the final slide show,
giulio wrote his own music and played it on his guitar....i used it as
the "closer" for the student slide show....

to top it all off, giulio exhibited his work in rome last month....my
gut feeling is that giulio's instinctive style will take him
far.....keep an eye out for this young man.....i have a feeling you
will see his name again and again.....

 

new york "scene 22"