Katrin Koenning

DRAWING CLOSER – RELATIONAL ENCOUNTERS

This five -day intensive workshop on the beautiful Island of Santorini will focus on creating a space for photographic thinking and exploration of our physical and emotional connection to the everyday and to that which is close to us, surrounding us locally and in proximity. We will think about the camera as a drawing-closer and as a tool for making relation; the personal as political and the hyper-local (one’s backyard) as a stage on which narrative can unfold and be fostered.

We will examine how a method of return (to a person, a community, a place, the self) can be a way of practicing this drawing closer, and of making kin. Katrin will provide in-depth insight into her own working processes and influences, and the workshop will centre a variety of approaches and challenges to working in a relational way. She will encourage and guide participant immersion with the island to find new ideas and make new pictures that are near and ‘resident’. These new beginnings may be collaborative, experiential and experimental.

Drawing on notions of photographic practice as a ‘being-in the-world’ and as something intimately connected with who we are, participants will be invited to understand the workshop as a deep and honest meeting point for rigorous exchange, and collective and individual discussion of their own work. Participants are encouraged to bring to the workshop projects-in-progress, previous ‘finished’ work, books and book dummies, personal questions or ideas for a future photographic work. Always asking what is at stake, we will study participant’s motivations and working processes, untangling how their work can engage with the realities that confront them and speak to their lived experiences.