Posted by Foto Care | Posted in Photography Workshops & Lectures
Posted on July 7, 2010 at 11:11 am

Foto Care presents an exclusive interview with Ernesto Bazan, renowned street photographer, workshop producer/ instructor, and award-winning book publisher. In 2002, Mr. Bazan created his own photographic workshops providing special emphasis in Latin America. Several hundred students have studied with him in the last eight years, many loyal students follow him on various photographic excursions year after year. Teaching has become his ruling passion. If one may judge a teacher by the work of his students, he has every reason to celebrate this successful endeavor.

This slide show features the breathtaking work produced by Mr. Bazan’s students. Upcoming 2010 workshops are listed below the interview.

As a renowned street-photographer, what inspired you to start doing workshops?

After working for over 20 years as a freelance photographer I grew very tired of my commercial assignments. Although, I had no idea if I would be a good teacher, I started my workshops while I was still living in Havana, Cuba. To my great surprise on January 2002 the first 8 students showed up at my house. It was the beginning of probably one of the most inspiring and rewarding things I have ever done in my entire life. The relation between my students and I have shaped not only my photographic work, it has also given me the priceless privilege of taking only and exclusively my own pictures.The release of my self-published book BazanCuba was another hallmark of this special relation. Fifty of my students helped me both with the creative and financial aspects of the book. I was able to maintain total control over each image and each word from the book. Winning the best book of the year award at the New York Photo Festival last year or selling 50 copies of BazanCuba in less than an hour last June at Lumix Young Photographer Photo Festival in Hanover, Germany, are some of the little rewards for this book done with all our heart and soul.

By creating BazanPhotos Publishing we are now working on new books both from my best students and me in the years to come.

I see that you are now in your seventh, and eighth year for some of the locations you offer. What has been the most fulfilling aspect of the workshops, and of going back to these places each year?

As I was saying earlier, my workshops have shaped my way of working. By returning, over and over again, to places such as Oaxaca during Day of the Dead Celebrations or Easter in Sicily, it has given me the unique opportunity to delve more and more into these events and to tune in more with daily life. All of this has given me the ability to lead my students better, to help them make more interesting pictures and also to be able to see more with my internal eye, which in turn has made my work more intimate and profound. The more I return to the same locations, the more I’m able to excavate under the surface of life. Just by looking at the students’ gallery above (and on my web site) you can see exactly what I mean.

Are there any locations that consistently provide the backdrop for breathtaking photo opportunities?

I honestly adore each workshop’s location. From the teeming streets of New York City to the unspoiled Peruvian Andes and the Amazon, or the amazing Salvador de Bahia and its breathtaking countryside I feel that each workshop provides myriad opportunities to probe into the rich daily life of each place.

Are there any upcoming workshops that you are especially fond of?

The one place that comes to mind is Salvador de Bahia, my new Havana as I like to call it. I love it so much there that I’m now offering 4 different workshops in and around Salvador every year. In the one coming up in August we will explore the rich daily life in the city, we will spend three days on the fascinating island of Itaparica, and three days in a Ulysses-like fishing village during their traditional celebrations.

What projects are you working on these days?

As we speak, my students and I are working on the editing and sequencing of my next book on the Cuban countryside that will be my first book in color. It’s due out in the Spring of 2011 and will be called Al Campo (In The Countryside). We have just started fund-raising for the book by selling limited edition copies of the book which will feature three color prints. Over twenty students have already pledged their support at this initial stage. It’s a very intimate and personal body of work in which I had the great privilege to photograph my farmers’ friends and their family in their daily existence.

Ernesto Bazan Workshops Available in 2010

Salvador de Bahia and Itaparica island
SECOND YEAR
From the 7th through the 16th of August

Tight Editing of Your Work – Veracruz – Mexico
THIRD YEAR
From the 21st through the 27th of September

Intimate Journey – Cuzco – Peru
NINETH YEAR
From the 1st through the 11th of October

Life and Death – Oaxaca – Mexico
NINETH YEAR
From the 28th of October through November 6th

Unknown Ecuador – Cuenca – Ecuador
FOURTH YEAR
From November 16th through the 26th of November

The Candomblè Feast in Salvador – Brazil
THIRD YEAR
From the 3rd through the 12th of December

For further information on the workshops email
workshops@bazanphotos.com or ernesto_bazan@hotmail.com

About Ernesto Bazan

Ernesto Bazan has been photographing the changing lives of Cubans since the collapse of the Soviet Union. He is the author of several photography books and has been awarded many photographic prizes including, a grant from Mother Jones Foundation for Photojournalism (1995); two grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts (1996, 2000); first prize in the daily life story category at the World Press Photo competition (1996); two fellowships, one from Alicia Patterson Foundation (1997) and the Guggenheim Foundation (2000); the Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize (1997); the W. Eugene Smith grant (1998); a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism (2000).

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