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Casablanca Gallery

La Source du Lion and the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Casablanca, Morocco. June 2008. This workshop was developed as part of Moving Walls: A Documentary Photography Exhibition. An international exhibition curated and sponsored by the Open Society Institute a private operating and grant making foundation based in New York City. Simon Wheatley taught this five-day workshop to a total of nine students. The workshop was more about creating a dialog on photography and the reasons for making photographs than actually working on concrete story ideas.   Simon encouraged a shift in thinking about the medium, focusing on the importance of photographing human situations from within rather than from the outside. As the week progressed students developed an awareness of the need to establish relations with people before photographing and, if intimate documentary photography was to be the result, to be a human being first and a photographer after that. If it was a question for many of the students of going backwards in order to go forwards, this workshop helped them overcome certain mental barriers that they held before.   As a result a few produced new work during the five days to be shown in the gallery while others produced edits of previous work. Most importantly for Simon and the group was that through the on-going workshop dialog some walls were moved and gaps were created which allow for the adventurous to squeeze forth and find the space to create interesting, thought provoking reportages on topics that are culturally and socially significant.

 

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