Life and Death: A Creativity Workshop
Location: Oaxaca, Mexico
Dates: Oct. 24th – Nov. 4th, 2009
USA Info: (360) 301-4121 • www.jonathansafir.com
Mexico Info: Cel. (044-55) 1365-1746 • www.lalux.com
Cost: $1,950 USD
(A few scholarships are available - please inquire by email - see Discussion Board below)
(transportation to/from Oaxaca, accommodations and meals are not included)
We have assembled an unusual group of teachers for this workshop that lets us explore our own creativity while taking us into the heart of Oaxaca during Mexico’s most profound ceremony, the Day of the Dead.
We’ll work together on a series of creative exercises that take us to a greater awareness of our ways of seeing and let us rediscover what was so compelling about our first encounters with photography.
The workshop will meet daily in the unique and awe-inspiring Ex-Convento de Santo Domingo de Guzmán, which hosts the Museo de las Culturas de Oaxaca, in the center of the city of Oaxaca.
We will begin each day with exercises inspired by The Artist’s Way, led by Enrique Cervera. The exercises are intended to reflect on our own true authentic desires and inspirations. We do this, first by locating our creative blocks, then by identifying the sources of these blocks, and finally by learning the tools to tame these creative monsters.
Sean Kernan will guide us as a group through a series of exercises that use music, theater games, and written observations to let us experience our creativity directly, not only to produce photographs but to be more aware of our own experience.
At the same time, we will start our work in Oaxaca and Oaxaca's central valley, as the population prepares for the Day of the Dead, one of the most profound, fascinating events in the culture of Mexico.
Jonathan Safir, who has been working on an extended film project in Oaxaca for many years, will guide us through the intricacies of this significant event. His experience and knowledge gives us the unique chance to get into the deeper mystery of the continuity between life and death, ceremony and party, tradition, art, business, and most deeply, heritage.
We will visit sites around the valley where we will experience the local culture through Oaxacan art and food, looking at the vital role that "art" plays in the continuity of tradition. We will visit different artists' studios - paper-making, glass-blowing, printmaking, hand-making chocolate in women's homes, and Day of the Dead bread bakeries, as well as cemeteries and markets, and a wide array of culinary experiences.
As we work, we will also meet daily to discuss the photographs that we are making, so that we can get a sense of how our work is developing. If you’ve been working alone, as most photographers do, this will be a wonderful chance to see how your work affects others and to refine it. We will also continue to do various creative exercises.
The aim of the week is to let our work extend us while it carries us into an extraordinary cultural event. In this sense it will be a kind of retreat, not 'from' something but 'into' something new.
The workshop is not just for the photographically accomplished, but for all photographers who want to discover and refine their own work as artists. The only requirement is that one should arrive ready to drop one’s habits and to be surprised.
As a practical matter, bring: your camera and laptop, comfortable clothing for a climate that ranges between the high 80s and the mid 50s. A tripod might be useful, but extensive lighting would not be needed, beyond perhaps a small flash.
Contact Info
| Email: | |
| Location: | Oaxaca, Mexico |
My own relationship to teaching seems to be changing and evolving. For one thing, it feels as though I have been putting together a great structure that encompasses the making of art, the making of ideas, the making of...things you can't always see. It it like a huge half-finished building seen in the fog.
So here's how I teach--we build a structure from a kit that is missing a number of parts and several pages of the instructions, most importantly the last page. But that's how it always is.
There was an important node in all this when I taught a class to the faculty at the Maine Media Workshops in the Summer of 08. Communication Arts ran an article about it in January, and you can read it here. Also, I recorded the opening talk of that class, and you can here it here.
In class, photo: Jay Maisel
FYI, my teaching background includes teaching and lecturing at the New School/Parsons (New York), Art Center (Pasadena), International Center of Photography (New York), the Maine and Santa Fe Workshops, the University of Texas, Austin Peay University (Tenn.), the F. Holland Day Foundation (Maine),Wesleyan University,Townhouse Gallery (Cairo), Institute of Art (Atlanta)