Max Pinckers

SPECULATIVE DOCUMENTARY

How can photography convincingly engage with the world while at the same time recognize its own shortcomings and blind spots? How can we be inspired by the paradox of attempting to approach reality with a documentary attitude while it continuously mutates and evaporates? With photojournalism and documentary photography becoming increasingly formulaic, how can we rethink the documentary attitude conceptually, formally and methodologically?

This workshop will explore how self-reflexivity, uncertainty, imagination and speculation are an inherent part of documentary making, however contradictory that may sound.

During this five-day course in this unique and diverse Aegean island, we will delve into documentary theory, discuss contemporary practitioners and experiment with a number of playful exercises that test the limitations and expand the boundaries of documentary photography. You are encouraged to bring along an appetite for discussion and existing work or ideas for future projects that you’d like to think through.