Harry Gruyaert

Workshop

10-14 July 2023
Marseille, France

About the
WORKSHOP

Harry Gruyaert is a pioneer of European colour photography. Since the 1970’s Gruyaert has developed an extraordinary poetic oeuvre of intensely complex images, captured on his travels in many parts of the world. Gruyaert has a dérive sensibility, photographing portals into the multi-layered urban environment and we, the viewer, are seduced both inside and outside the experience of his images. In the introduction of Gruyaert’s latest book, Between Worlds, the writer and curator, David Campany describes Gruyaert as, ‘the very embodiment of the speculative photographer, the itinerant observer, moving through the world with no greater or lesser purpose than to notice and picture it.’

Harry Gruyaert rarely conducts workshops. These 5-days will be a unique and intense opportunity to be taught and inspired by this highly influential photographer.
The theme of the workshop is A Sense of Place. Participating photographers are expected to produce a body of work to be presented on the last day of the workshop to a public audience.
Marseille is the vibrant location where participants will be encouraged to wander the streets and boulevards, and visually absorb the rich diversity of this city, allowing chance encounters to discover photographic possibilities.
  • WORKSHOP STRUCTURE
  • Day 1: Harry Gruyaert will present his work and methodologies of his working practise. As well as his photography he will show a film series called A Sense of Place, which is also the theme of the workshop. Participants will introduce themselves to the group and present their portfolio.
  • Day 2: Participants will discuss project ideas to the group and will begin photographing on the streets of Marseille.
  • Day 3: Participants will begin the process of presenting the work made on Day 2, in a group critique session. Participants will then continue shooting on the streets of Marseille.
  • Day 5: A busy day to edit and sequence photographs for a presentation in the evening to a public audience.
Each day we will meet at 10am and finish at 6pm.
The location of the workshop:
Dos Mares
Ateliers
5 rue Vian
13006 Marseille
To conclude the workshop on the the final evening there will be an event and presentation of the projects produced, in the form of a slide show, to a public audience. Followed by a presentation and talk by Harry Gruyaert. This event will take place at the Les Atelier Blancarde, an old railway station, in Marseille.
Les Atelier Blancarde
1.Pl. de la Gare de la Blancarde
13004 Marseille
The workshop will be in English and French.

Harry Gruyaert studied cinema & photography in Brussels from 1959 to 1962. He then became a photographer in Paris, while working as a freelance photography director for the Flemish television between 1963 and 1967.
In 1969, he made the first of a long series of trips to Morocco. From 1970 to 1972 he lived in London. This will be the occasion for unprecedented visual experiments: he decides to “cover” the 1972 Munich Olympic Games as well as the first Apollo flights on the broken television screen at his disposal, by manipulating colors. This series is now part of the Center Georges Pompidou collections in Paris.
Between 1973 and 1980, he undertook a long photo essay on Belgium reconnecting with his roots, photographing first in black & white then in color.
Harry Gruyaert joined the Magnum Photos cooperative in 1982 and continued to travel extensively, particularly in Asia, and to the USA, the Middle East and Soviet Union.
Among these important works, the two editions of Rivages (2003 and 2008), both out of print, and the expanded reissue of 2018, bear witness to Harry Gruyaert’s passion for contrasting environments, colors, and lights.
Among several important exhibitions, the first retrospective was dedicated to him at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, in 2015, as well as a major exhibition in 2018 at the Fotomuseum in Antwerp.
In the 2000s Harry Gruyaert dropped film for digital. This change made him concerned about the quality of the prints made up until then in cibachrome or sometimes in dye transfer, so he decided to start experimenting at an early stage with inkjet printing. This new technique allowed him to print with more precision by rendering the images exactly how he wanted.
Harry Gruyaert is represented by Galerie FiftyOne, in Antwerp, and Magnum Gallery in Paris.

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