Photobook Workshop in Aarhus Denmark, during Photobook Week 4 - 7 October

Photobook Week Aarhus celebrates its 5th edition from 4-7 October 2018.

Since 2014, the Photobook Week Aarhus has been engaged with the photobook in all its facets and has presented a festival programme of international standing. For its 5th anniversary, Photobook Week Aarhus is showing works by renowned artists and promotes established and emerging talents, publishers, curators, printers and booksellers.

During the festival I will be presenting a 2 day workshop, focussed on the photobook, it's conception, structure, editing, sequencing, production and distribution.

The Festival says this:

New Zealander Harvey Benge works from Auckland and Paris. He has been a full-time camera artist since 1993, when his first photobook Four Parts Religion, Six Parts Sin was published. Benge is well known for his many photo books which have been published in Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Japan. His principal publisher is UK’s Dewi Lewis, who has worked with Benge for 20 years. Harvey Benge’s bookworks are conceptual in nature and deal with the complexities of life and the nature of seeing and understanding. His photographs are mostly urban and generally strange. His work is mysterious; nothing is solid. The pictures capture contrasts and conflicts which leave you wondering what has just happened and what might happen next. Benge’s bookworks have been exhibited a Kunsthalle Düsseldorf; Antwerp Foto Museum, Belgium; Foam Fotografiemuseum, Amsterdam; Photographers Gallery, London; and Palais de Tokyo, Paris. His books have twice been finalists in the Prix du Livre at the Rencontres d’Arles, France. Harvey Benge is also known for the workshops he has conducted, working with photographers such as Lewis Baltz, Antoine d’Agata, Paul Graham, Rineke Dijkstra, John Gossage, Alec Soth, Roger Ballen.

The workshop “The objective of my workshops is to unpack strategies for the development of a complete and balanced lens-based art practice. In effect an investigation into the process that I employ and has lead me to the production of sixty or more photo books over the last thirty years. Benge will show participants how he has conceptualised, structured and produced several of his key bookworks. Further, participants will be asked to participate in a “live” editing and sequencing session of a new bookwork of his scheduled for publication in 2020. Participants will need to bring to the workshop work-prints of current photographs which can then be reviewed and evaluated within the group. This will involve discussion as to the rigour and relevance of the works’ conceptual underpinning followed by a hard look at possible edits and sequencing leading to photobook production”.

Harvey Benge’s workshops are interactive, inspiring and good fun. Harvey will cover a spectrum of issues that affect all photographers – finding one’s own voice, idea generation, self evaluation of work, what makes a good picture, development of picture series. Emphasis will be on the photobook where strategies for editing and sequencing will be discussed with practical examples. Participants’ own work will be reviewed both in terms of how the pictures work and the ways the photographs can be carried forward to a finished photobook. 

You can read more about Photobook Week Aarhus HERE together with a link to book your place at my workshop. Hope to see you in Aarhus!