VISUAL THINKERS // CREATIVE SOULS: en workshop med Arno Minkkinen

Workshopen med Arno vil foregå på engelsk:

We all have our influences. The history of photography is ultimately written from the same lens, carved out of the same attributes anyone placing an eye to a viewfinder will recognize and utilize. Finding inspiration from the work of others is certain to elevate our motivation and determination, but too much influence can also drown our confidence. That’s the tricky part: how to take charge of your vision so that the work it generates remains your own.

In this intensive, five-day workshop, we will explore how the imagery of others—from Talbot to Tenneson, Muybridge to Michals—can help place your work into brand new contexts while expanding your vision to match the challenges such perspectives can bring. Through historical and contemporary slide presentations, individual assignments and group critiques, verbal and drawing exercises, not to mention spontaneous back pocket surprises, we will find the days barely long enough to do everything, yet with luck and trust, the week will remain like a month in memory as you build a new vision to take forward for years to come.

About Arno Rafael Minkkinen:
Arno is a Finnish-American photographer. He was born in Helsinki in 1945 and emigrated to the United States in 1951. A graduate of Wagner College with a BA in English Literature, he began taking self-portraits in 1971 while working as an advertising copywriter on Madison Avenue in New York. Studying later with Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind at Rhode Island School of Design, he earned his MFA degree in photography in 1974. Over the past four decades, Minkkinen has been primarily engaged as a teacher, curator, and writer while continuing to devote his photographic research and energies to the self-portrait: unmanipulated images of the naked human figure in the natural landscape.Professor of Art at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, Minkkinen also serves as Docent at Aalto University of Art & Design Helsinki and visiting professor at the Lahti Design Institute in Finland. Earlier in his teaching career he served as Assistant Professor at MIT, Visiting Artist at Philadelphia College of Art (now University of the Arts), at the École d’Arts Appliqués in Vevey, Switzerland. He has conducted workshops at Maine Photographic Workshops, Toscana Photographic Workshops, Santa Fe Workshops, Anderson Ranch in Colorado, and Fotobrygga in the Lofoten Islands in Norway among many others.

Published and exhibited worldwide, Minkkinen’s work can be found in the collections of the Centre Pompidou and Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, the Musée de l’Élysée in Lausanne, the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography among many others.

Six monographs have been published: Frostbite(1978), Waterline(1994, winner of the 25th Rencontres d'Arles Book Prize), Body Land(1999), SAGA: The Journey of Arno Rafael Minkkinen, 35 Years of Photographs(2005), and Homework: The Finnish Photographs, (2008), and Balanced Equation(2010). SAGA premiered at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, MA in 2005. The 120-print retrospective toured to Romania, Slovakia, Finland, Italy, China, and Canada.

A number of galleries represent Minkkinen's work: Robert Klein Gallery in Boston, Barry Friedman Ltd. and Tibor de Nagy Gallery in New York, Galerie Agathe Gaillard in Paris, Galerie Valérie Bach in Bruxelles, Photo & Contemporary in Torino, Galerie Anhava in Helsinki, and SEE + Artspace Gallery in Beijing.

Serving a four-year term as national board member of the Society of Photographic Education, Minkkinen continues his involvement with teaching and academic research. He was conferred knighthood with the First Class Order of the Lion Medal by the Finnish government in 1992 and awarded the Finnish State Art Prize in Photography in 2006. He lives with his wife Sandra on Fosters Pond in Andover, Massachusetts.

GAMMEL KLEPPE FARM:
The workshop will take place on historical Gammel Kleppe Farm in Vågå. It was here, in Gudbrandsdalen, that Asbjørnsen and Moe collected and found inspiration for most of their fairytales. It was here journeymen came to work the farms, behold exquisite log houses, and could gaze out across the blue horizons.

Gammel-Kleppe Farm is one of Norway's best preserved farms from the Viking era and will immediately take you back in time, with its historical atmosphare. The farm is situated on top of a hill, with breathtaking views over tree major mountain stretches in Norway: Jotunheimen, Rondane og Dovre,

From the size of the main house, which dates back to 1600, it is obvious that the farm was built for a prominent chieftain. With it’s 13 buildings, all percerved in the original building style, with walls consisting of whole timber logs stacket on top of each other, it makes for a perfect backdrop for this workshop. The interior decorating, which is a beautiful mix of old furniture, artwork, and modern equipment makes for a very special housing experience.

ARRIVAL AND DEPARTURE:
Students should arrive at the farm on the evening of June 13TH. We will all sit down for a welcome dinner at 19:00. After dinner we go straight into workshop mode, and stay there until our Final show on the evening of Sunday the 17TH of June. Students should plan to leave monday-morning after breakfast.

Link to Gammel Kleppe Farm: Gammel Kleppe

WORKSHOP TUITION + ACCOMMODATION:
Workshop tuition: NOK 8.500,-
Accommodation: NOK 5.500,- (This is based on accommodation in shared rooms, and includes breakfast, lunch and dinner).

Room and board is paid directly to our hosts at Gammel-Kleppe Farm, the first day of our stay.

Shared rooms:
We hope that as many as possible get to experience this exclusive workshop with Arno in Norway, and ask that the participants are willing to share rooms. We will arrange for men to share with men and women to share with women, unless otherwise requested. We are renting the entire farm so there will be space for privacy.

Travel expenses to the farm is not included in the tuition and is is each participants own responsibility.

There will be a maximum limit of 15 participants.

REGISTER FOR WORKSHOP HERE or e-mail us at post@nordphotography.com

CANCELATION RULES
For the workshop to run we need a minimum of 7 participants. If we for some reason are not able to reach our minimum number, the workshop will be canceled and you will receive a full refund. The workshop will take place in Vågå. If you are traveling here, we ask that you wait to book a ticket until we have confirmed that the minimum number is reach.

NORDphotography is not responsible for reimbursement of non-refundable airline/ train tickets in the event of a program cancellation. Please check on your workshop status before making travel arrangements.

We suggest that you always have traveler's insurance.

Withdrawal and Refund Policy
Enrollment is limited in our workshops, so once you have been accepted your participation is important to us - we are counting on you to attend.

We do however understand that sometimes plans fall trough and offer the following cancellation policies:

For our NORWAY workshops:
Withdraw more than 60 days before the start of class and we will refund all monies paid, minus a administration fee of NOK 800,-.

Withdraw between 60 days or less before the start of class and we will charge you with the full workshop tuition.