This course largely focuses on two photographic ideas: distance and time.

The distance photographers choose in the environment around them determines their stance and aesthetic choices with regard to composition and framing. More broadly, distance from the subject allows them to step back and take a level-headed look that does not revert to habits and reflexes in order to structure an approach.

Time by nature determines the shoot and, overall, is necessary to correctly understand things, compose a story and grasp the images’ relationship to each other.

After a group shoot and a location-scouting session, Ambroise Tézenas will guide participants in making personal series, building them day after day by alternating shoots in the field and precise editing sessions. Without this approach being exclusive, the course will largely focus on the idea of "landscape documentary", fostering reflection and nurturing everybody’s inspiration.

Arles, a unique place with a tremendously rich cultural heritage, from the 2,000-year-old arena to the Frank Gehry-designed tower that is just starting to rise, will be an ideal playground for that. The Rhône enters the city from the north, becoming a delta and giving the Camargue its identity. Further on, the area is more banal, marked by flows, networks, peripheries, boundaries, abandoned factories and stretches of standardized housing.

Whatever the subject chosen, the aim will be to show the passage of time with the idea of duration and sentiment. There will also be a night shoot.

AMBROISE TÉZENAS
Born 1972 in Boulogne-Billancourt, lives and works in Paris.
Graduate of the Ecole d’Arts Appliqués in Vevey, Switzerland en 1994. Based first in London, then Paris, Ambroise Tézenas works for the French and international press, including The New York Times Magazine since 2007, traveling often to Southeast Asia and Central and South America. In 2009, he won the Nikon Story Teller Award at the PDN Photo Annual (US). He works on commissions as well as personal projects involving landscape and the effects of globalization and urbanization on man. He is the author of several books, including I was here (Actes Sud and Dewi Lewis Publishing 2014) and Beijing: Theater of the People, which was published in seven European countries and won the European Publisher’s Award for Photography. His work is often shown in Europe and Asia, especially at Rotterdam’s Kunsthal Museum and the Rencontres d'Arles (2007, 2015 and 2018). It is in many private collections worldwide as well as the public collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the Musée Français de la Photographie in Bièvres. He is represented by the l gallery.
Personal website : ambroisetezenas.com