Nocturne: Image Making in the Dark

Conducted by Michael Grieve

Berlin

25-28 February 2027

"Otherwise, all I remember of the denizens of the Nocturama is that several of them had strikingly large eyes, and the fixed inquiring gaze found in certain painters and philosophers who seek to penetrate the darkness which surrounds us purely by means of looking and thinking." - W.G. Sebald

The Berlin winter offers an opportunity to explore the illumination of the dark nights. Artificial light provides a rich palette of colours. The dark shrouds and transforms reality into another visual and visceral experience. The contradictory idea is to make the ambiguity of dark space visually clear.

With different intentions photographers such as Brassaï, Weegee, Robert Adams, Paul Seawright, Rut Blees Luxemburg, Dolores Marat, Peter Hujar, to mention only a few, have engaged with the night.

This workshop is focused on a creative documentation of the city. Via experimentation, relevant techniques will be identified to produce photographs with a psychological emphasis. Daytime can be understood as ordered in the symbolic reality while the nocturnal space breaks down this order revealing a greater freedom that cuts through this symbolic reality.

The Nocturne workshop is a theme that endeavours to circumscribe a perception of the metropolitan space that values fragments, unexpected juxtapositions and elements obscured by everyday experience. Revealing the mystery beneath the apparently banal surfaces of the modern city, it provokes the emergence of extraordinary realities drawn from the realms of the exotic, the erotic and the unconscious. This 4-day experience endeavours to help participating photographers find new ways of understanding the urban environment and spatial relations towards the realisation of subjective documentary projects that attempt to go beyond prevailing mechanised modes of thought. With a heightened awareness of strange juxtapositions, layering and hidden places that build up the uncanny fabric of the city.

Before the workshop begins participants will be set an assignment.

Schedule:

Day 1: A group introduction followed by a presentation/lecture on art, encompassing literature, film, painting, photography and the relationship to night and darkness. Participants will bring the assignment. Project ideas will be discussed. At night participants will be shooting.

Day 2: In the afternoon participants will present the work photographed the previous night and we will critique the work, identifying meaning and improving on visual strategies. At night participants will be shooting.

Day 3: The same as day 2.

Day 4: A summation of the work that has been made during the workshop. A presentation to a public audience.