Magnum Workshop Fremantle at FotoFreo 2010

Bookings for Workshops are now open!

Apply for Magnum Workshops Fremantle here.

An Australian first and a new addition to the programme FotoFreo 2010: The City of Fremantle Festival of Photography is excited to confirm dates for the three, 5-day workshops led by world-class photographers of the esteemed Magnum Photos agency. The Magnum Workshop Fremantle will take place from 15th to 19th of March 2010 and will be held at the beautiful and historic Fremantle Arts Centre, a vibrant arts organisation in the centre of Fremantle that runs exhibitions, workshops, residencies and events. The workshops have been scheduled so that participants can also attend the exhibitions and events of FotoFreo 2010.

Australia’s only Magnum Photos member, Trent Parke will be one of the tutors alongside Chien-Chi Chang and Bruno Barbey. FotoFreo Programme Manager June Moorhouse said, “ This is an extraordinary opportunity for Australians and overseas guests to learn from the world’s leading photographers and to enjoy the following days of the Festival. These workshops will book out fast.”

Magnum Photos is a world renown cooperative of photographers with offices in Paris, London, New York and Tokyo, founded in 1947 by Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and David “Chim” Seymour. The planned Workshops are an extension of FotoFreo’s long-term relationship with Magnum Photos which has built up over previous festivals.

Fremantle is a vibrant port city part of the Perth metropolitan area in Western Australia. Often described as a city of artists, Fremantle is home to many of the state's leading practitioners in the visual arts, crafts, writing, film and photography. An interesting and visual place, Fremantle is a bustling port city with outstanding historic buildings and surrounded by beaches.

Scholarships for Western Australian Photographers

FotoFreo is offering three scholarships to photographers residing in Western Australia for the Magnum PhotosWorkshops Fremantle. The scholarships will cover the tuition cost of the five-day workshops. Applicants were asked to submit 10 images with a narrative, a statement about the images and a biography. Applications were judged on technical merit, the ability to construct a narrative and the perceived benefit to the applicant’s career. This initiative is supported by funding from the Department of Culture and the Arts,WA.

The winners of the scholarship are Claire Martin, Talhy Stotzer and Richard Wainwright.

Trent Parke

Trent Parke was raised in Newcastle, New South Wales. Using his mother's Pentax Spotmatic and the family laundry as a darkroom, he began taking pictures when he was around 12 years old. Today, Parke, the only Australian photographer to be represented by Magnum Photos, works primarily as a street photographer. In 2003, with wife and fellow photographer Narelle Autio, Parke drove almost 90,000 km around Australia. Minutes to Midnight, the collection of photographs from this journey, offers an occasionally disturbing portrait of twenty-first century Australia, from the desiccated outback to the chaotic, melancholic vitality of life in remote Aboriginal towns. For this project Parke was awarded the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography. Parke won World Press Photo Awards in 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2005, and in 2006 was granted the ABN AMRO Emerging Artist Award. He was selected to be part of the World Press Photo Masterclass in 1999. Parke has published two books, Dream/Life in 1999, and The Seventh Wave with Narelle Autio in 2000. His work has been exhibited widely. In 2006 the National Gallery of Australia acquired Parke's entire Minutes to Midnight exhibition.

Chien-Chi Chang

In his work, Chien-Chi Chang makes manifest the abstract concepts of alienation and connection. "The Chain", a collection of portraits made in a mental asylum in Taiwan, caused a sensation when it was shown at La Biennale di Venezia (2001) and the Bienal de Sao Paolo (2002). The shocking, nearly life-sized photographs of pairs of patients literally chained together resonate with Chang’s jaundiced look at the less visible bonds of marriage. He has treated marital ties in two books—I do I do I do (2001), a collection of images depicting alienated grooms and brides in Taiwan, and in Double Happiness (2005), a brutal depiction of the business of selling brides in Vietnam. The ties of family and of culture are also the themes of an ambitious project begun in 1992. For 17 years, Chang has photographed the bifurcated lives of Chinese immigrants in New York’s Chinatown, along with those of their wives and families back home in Fujian. A work in progress, "China Town" was hung at the National Museum of Singapore in 2008 as part of a mid-career survey, "Doubleness", Chang’s investigation of the ties that bind one person to another draws on his own deeply divided immigrant experience.

Bruno Barbey

Bruno Barbey is a Frenchman born in Morocco. He studied photography and graphic arts at the École des Arts et Métiers in Vevey, Switzerland. Between 1961 and 1964 he photographed the Italians, treating them as protagonists of a small 'theatrical world', with the aim of capturing the spirit of a nation. During the 1960s, he was commissioned by Éditions Rencontre in Lausanne to report from European and African countries. He also contributed regularly to Vogue. Barbey began his relationship with Magnum Photos in 1964, becoming a full member in 1968, the year he documented the political unrest and student riots in Paris. A decade later, between 1979 and 1981, he photographed Poland at a turning point in its history, publishing his work in the widely acclaimed book Poland. He served as Magnum vice president for Europe in 1978 and 1979 and as President of Magnum International from 1992 - 1995. Over four decades Barbey has journeyed across five continents and into numerous military conflicts. Although he rejects the label of 'war photographer', he has covered civil wars in Nigeria, Vietnam, the Middle East, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Northern Ireland, Iraq and Kuwait. His work has appeared in most of the world's major magazines. Barbey is known particularly for his free and harmonious use of colour. He has frequently worked in Morocco, the country of his childhood. In 1999 the Petit Palais, Paris, organized a large exhibition of photographs that Barbey had taken in Morocco during the previous three decades. He has received many awards for his work, including the French National Order of Merit; his photographs have been exhibited internationally and are in numerous museum collections.”

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