WORKSHOP “WAR IS NOT A SHOW”
GERVASIO SÁNCHEZ
DAYS: thursday 5, friday 6 & saturday 7 o may 2016
HORARY: 09.00h.- 14.00h.
Price: 150€
Maximum number of attendees: 20
Place: Cultural Centre of La Nau
C/ Universitat 2
To register you must complete this form
For questions, you can send mail to info@photonfestival.com
SYNOPSIS OF THE WORKSHOP:
A photojournalist must be rigorous in the way he considers his work.
Must document the tragedies that happen around them, find other ways to show the reality. You don’t need to fall into sensationalism to tell the human drama.
Victims are entitled to dignity and respect. We must show them the way we would like ourselves to be shown if we were in their place.
And if they do not agree to appear on a story, we have to fully respect teir decision.
The media, especially in television, is subject to
the trade and logically the reporting obligation is dropping. 20 years ago a story lasted three minutes on the news and today hardly appears as a line of ten seconds.
John Berger says in his book “Another way to tell” that “a picture is a meeting point where the interests of the photographer, photographed, the viewer and those who use photography are often contradictory.”
When I work in contact with people suffering, my goal is to make disappear this contardictory meeting or at least make it smaller to the point to reach a balance between all the different interests.
I think the only way to achieve this is by establishing a tacit agreement with the protagonists of my photographs. You have to customize their dramas, their sorrows, their hopes.
The photograph which pictures the human drama, the essence of our failure, should avoid flowcharting, frivolity and spectacle.
Living among the victims gives you a different perspective because you just know their magical spaces, their best kept secrets, their unfinished dreams.
If you don’t suffer their pain, the shouts of the victims, their silence full of dignity, how can you convey the drama with decency, how can you mediate between pain and oblivion, horror and banality?
SCRIPT COURSE:
WAR IN COLOR.
My first images of the eighties and nineties.
I have always believed that the image does not need translation
simultaneously. That is the key to its power.
SARAJEVO 1992-1994
The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina is unquestionable part
my professional and personal life. At the slaughterhouse
I learned that the war can not be counted.
MINED LIVES 1997, 2002, 2007
When in September 1995 I traveled to Kuito (Angola) to
make my first reportage did not think my life would be
undermined forever for the victims of the terrible effects
of anti-personnel mines.
KOSOVO 1998-1999
On March 27, 1999 2,800 deported across the border.
Two days later, 40,053. The first week is 166,851.
At 14 days the figure exceeds 300,000.
On June 7 there are 423,844 refugees in Albania.
CHILDREN OF WAR
Two million dead, six million seriously injured or
disabled, orphaned one million, fifteen million
refugees or displaced are aseptic figures last
decade in a safer world than imagined after
end of the “Cold War”.
SIERRA LEONE WAR AND PEACE (1999-2004)
Amputation was the macabre uniqueness of war
Sierra Leona.Miles children were kidnapped in one of the
bloodiest and turned into wild African wars
fighters in an environment of drugs, violence and punishments.
MISSING (1998-2011)
Missing development has been more poignant and hurtful
my previous projects. It is not easy to see thousands of family
patiently waiting year after year for their turn in a long list.
Women of Afghanistan (2009-2014)
My latest project presented at the end of 2014 I have done
with journalist Mònica Bernabe and lasted six years.
Documenting the drama suffered by all women
Afghanistan has been one of my toughest jobs.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
John Berger.- Another way to count (Editorial Mestizo)
John Berger.- See (RotoVision)
Susan Sontag.- On Photography (Edhasa)
Jacob A.Riis.- How the Other Half Lives (Alba Editorial)
Roland Barthes.- Camera Lucida (Polity Press)
Robert Capa.- slightly unfocused (La Fabrica)
John Morris.- Get the picture! A personal history of photojournalism (Factory)
Sebastiao Salgado.- Memories. My land to Earth
