MagnumPhotos workshop; Goa, 2015

“Dear Sophie

Congratulations on being selected to participate in Magnum Photos workshop at Goa Photo with Stuart Franklin. The workshop will take place from 25 – 28 February 2015 at Krishnadas Shama Goa State Central Library, Panaji, India. Emily Graham, Magnum Photos"

I entered a handful of competitions and exhibitions ranging from LensCulture to Nomads Scholarship for National Geographic and Magnum Photo workshops in order to expose my work to a greater audience. The exhibitions included ones 2 watch and dirty laundry, both in Leeds. I came across the workshop online on Magnum's facebook page where the link to Magnum's official website was listed along with the opportunity to attend a workshop in Goa, with Magnum Photographer; Stuart Franklin, a British Magnum photographer who has worked for The Guardian, and contributed to National Geographic for over 15 years. This would take place in Panaji, Goa India and be in partnership with GoaPhoto 2015; India’s first international Photography festival. 

The workshop would last four days (25th – 28th February), and my project to shoot would need planning prior to arriving in Goa, particularly on which area of photography I wanted to work in, and what subject area I wanted to photograph whilst out in Goa.

To gain a place on the workshop we were asked to submit ten images which best highlighted our area of specialism or practice within photography, and submit a piece of writing that defined our series and project. I work in the genre of documentary photography, so I collectively gathered ten images from an ongoing body of work of mine which I confidently wanted to run with, titled; Against The Grain. This can be seen on my homepage to this site.

On the first day of the Magnum workshop, after a meet and greet, the morning was spent with my group of twelve peers reviewing each participant’s existing portfolio, alongside Stuart. Feedback was encouraged throughout the group, and Stuart gave advice on what areas to improve on existing work individually. The afternoon was then spent discussing our ideas with Stuart for the project we wanted to work on, in our time in Goa and for the Magnum workshop. This was followed by a talk and presentation by Stuart Franklin on his existing work, and a presentation on documentary photography and how it is portrayed in the medium of photography.

We were given a map of Panaji, Goa and were left to our own devices to explore and discover elements of the city and surrounding parts to photograph. As the GoaPhoto took place whilst I was on the workshop and it being the first international photography festival in India, I decided to photograph most of the exhibition spaces and the various classes of people that chose to visit each showing of GoaPhoto for part of my project. I thought that it was an interesting concept to portray how a westernised medium of art reacts in an eastern society for the first time.

There was a talk at Kala Academy, Panaji, an Art and Design institute about GoaPhoto festival to introduce us to the event which highlighted some of the photographers that took place in the exhibition.  Many Photographers from all over the world came to visit the exhibition, and ones that were included in the event such as Sebastian Cortes and Raghu Rai. So from the map given to me, I researched online and marked out where the exhibitions were taking place across Panaji and decided to visit them all. It was interesting to see that the audience of the exhibitions, with a culture, in some ways quite different to ours, viewed photography as a gateway into understanding other societies and was a form of communication to bond with fellow people, just like back home.

The final images I submitted for the end of workshop presentation was titled; Photography as Representation. I wanted to focus on the cultural response to photography in Goa, and compare it to our own understanding and perception of the medium within our own society, so at the time in 2015, I was working on shooting Derby’s Format Photography festival where I extended my project.

The final presentation from the MagnumPhotos workshop took place at the conference hall, institute Menezes-Braganza alongside Magnum Photographers Richard Kalvar, Stuart Franklin and Raghu Rai, fellow participants and an audience up to a hundred people, including international Photographers, Curators and the GoaPhoto team. This was an amazing experience. I strongly urge to apply as a practitioner to workshops when you get the chance. The skills you learn will highly inspire you to take your Photography to the next stage, and whatever your goal is within Photography, it will place you on the right springboard for inspiration to follow your passion. No doubt about it. Kind regards, Sophie