Master-guests
The two-year masterclass permanent curators are Gabriel Bauret and Giorgia Fiorio as art director; also invited to participate in each of the meetings are two master-guests from the international cultural scene. Past master-guests include: Ricardo Davila Wood, Bernard Plossu, Mimmo Jodice, Giovanna Calvenzi, Sylvaine Lecœur, Zeynep Gursel, Laurence Leblanc, Robert Y. Pledge, Lia Nalbantidou, Don McCullin, Renata Ferri, Mario Peliti, Roberta Valtorta, Christian Caujolle, Margot Klingsporn, Gabriele Basilico, Marco Finazzi, Stephen Dupont, Régis Debray, Benoît Rivero, Jean-Luc Monterosso, Ferdinando Scianna.
Artistic orientation and themes assigned
Each meeting unfolds as a collective interactive review session of each of the works presented, in a dialectical discussion between master-guests and students. Students present the evolution of their ongoing projects and the execution of an assigned theme, which differs each time. Students work freely on the themes, according to their own sensitivity and expressive language. The themes assigned are to be developed over the four months between each of the meetings and may either be integrated with the projects under way, or carried out as independent works. Past themes have included: “Fear,” “Vertigos”, “The Mirror Image”, “The Five Senses”, "Violence", “Time”, "Space: Where are You? Where is Where", “The Event”, "Freedom", "Fake", “The Human Body”, "Even", “H2O”, “Faces”, “Borders”.
How it works
The masterclass unfolds over six meetings – one every four months – over a two-year period, i.e. three meetings lasting two days per year; meetings take place in February, June and October. The course is free and acceptance is exclusively by nomination and contest. No more than fifteen students are accepted; students must be of legal age, and there are no restrictions as to provenance. Candidates may be nominated for examination by the selection jury, which is made up as follows: the permanent curators GF and GB, invited past and present master-guests, a representative of the host institute, former students and/or second-year students, members of the Board of Directors and/or members who have been awarded with this privilege.
Institutions
Meetings of the masterclass do not have a permanent venue and are hosted at European locations which differ each time, and include: museums, theatres, public institutions, schools, festivals and other sites, sharing its same intents. Each of the institutions receives a photographic essay of its structure and all those operating there, produced by the students in the masterclass. To date, RM has been hosted at Contact Press Images Photojournalistic Agency in Paris, France; Festival Rencontres Photographiques de la Sud Gironde in Bordeaux, France; Museo Castello Ducale in Corigliano Calabro, Italy; Pinacoteca Provinciale di Bari, Italy; Archivio Parisio in Naples, Italy; Thessaloniki Photobiennale, Thessaloniki, Greece; Accademia delle Belle Arti di Lecce, Italy; Ostkreuzschule, Berlin, Germany; Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea Cinisello Balsamo, Italy; Italian Institute of Culture in Paris, France; Provincia di Roma Palazzo Incontro, Rome, Italy; Reportage Atri Festival, Italy; Gran Teatro La Fenice, Venice, Italy; Actes Sud Editions, Arles, France; Novartis Campus Basel, Switzerland.
Conditions
The two-year masterclass offers each of the hosting institutions a collective photographic essay concerning the host structure. Institutional work is carried out by volunteer photographers during the 2/3 days successive to the masterclass. The institutions receive from 3 to 5 photographs for each of the participating students. The institutions may make whatever use of a cultural nature they wish of the photographic material, but they cannot use it for commercial purposes. As compensation the institutions will cover expenses for board over the 2 days of the masterclass, and the 2/3 days successive to the seminar during which the institutional work is carried out. Those students who do not take part in the institutional work must pay for their own expenses. The images are selected by the permanent curators GF and GB; they are then presented to the institutions in the form of digital files, and a presentation book layout – IW (Institutional Work) mini-book – by RM’s Artistic Direction. Anything further – photography exhibitions, books, multimedia, and so on – shall involve an agreement between the institutions, the art director and the permanent curator, in consideration of deadlines and funding available. Should any form of collaboration with educational institutions arise, the RMNPO will offer two visiting students the opportunity to take part in the meetings and activities of the seminar.
Photographers
Salvatore Arnone, Martina Bacigalupo, Marc Beckmann, Guia Besana, Fabrizio Bonfanti, Loran Bonnardot, Marina Cavazza, Virginie Chibau, Gianni Cipriano, Pierre Clauss, Melania Comoretto, Anne-Lise Cornet, Martin Cregg, Annalisa D’Angelo, Sumit Dayal, Daniele Delaini, Alexandra Demenkova, Edouard De Pazzis, Anna Di Prospero, Walter D’Ottavi, Laura El-Tantawy, Torkil Faerø, Bruno Fert, Arianna Forcella, Simona Ghizzoni, Stefano Giogli, Federica Giorgetti, Nicolò Giudice, Chiara Goia, Hirotaka Hashimoto, Olga Hoffman, Yian Huang, Emilie Hudig, Marinde Hurenkamp, Alessandro Imbriaco, Nga Jehad, Minny Lee, Emile Loreaux, Sirio Magnabosco, Giovanni Melillo, Patrick Mourral, Francesco Patriarca, Alice Pavesi, Elena Perlino, Franco Pierno, Giovanni Presutti, Grégoire Pujade-Laurane, Alisa Resnik, Marta Sarlo, Leslie Searles, Miki Soejima, Ali Taptik, Leah Tepper-Byrne, Achilleas Tilegrafos, Gianfranco Tripodo, Gihan Tubbeh, Cristina Vatielli, Francesca Vergnano.
Represented Countries
Canada, Korea, Egypt, Philippines, France, Germany, Japan, Greece, India, Italy, Ireland, Lebanon, Norway, Holland, Peru, Poland, Russia, Singapore, Turkey.
Photograph of the Month
At each meeting, the best photograph taken in each of the four months since the previous meeting will be awarded a cash prize of 100 Euros (three times a year, 400 Euros each time). The price is offered by Reflexions Masterclass Association Board Members. A Jury will be formed encompassing each time: Art Director GF, Permanent Curator GB, two Master guests, one representative member of Hosting institution and visiting former students. Should the quality of the photographic work of one or more of the four months presented from one time to the next be deemed unsatisfactory, no award will be given, and the amount will be added to the total amount for the subsequent selection. Should some of the months remain unassigned a competition will be organized among former students for the creation of the missing images. The prize for these photographs will again be 100 Euros each.
Two-year masterclass programme for 2010
February 13th/14th Arles, France, the masterclass is hosted by French Publisher Actes Sud. Master-guests are French writer Régis Debray and the publisher Mario Peliti. Competitive selections are held yearly during the February session.
May 29th/30th Basel, Switzerland, the masterclass is hosted by the Novartis Campus. Invited master-guests are the Director of the Paris Maison Européenne de la Photographie Jean-Luc Monterosso, and photographer Ferdinando Scianna.
November 6th/7th Paris, France, the masterclass is hosted by the Maison Européenne de la Photographie on the occasion of Paris’s thirtieth Mois de la Photo. Invited master-guests will be Director of the Photography Department of Publishing House Actes Sud and of the collection Photopoche, Benoît Rivero, and photographer Klavdij Sluban.
