WORKSHOP with MACHIEL BOTMAN

Saturday 1 and Sunday 2, May 2010

PROGRAM
Let's pack a week into two days, I show you my work, prints, books and dummies and you show me your stuff, whatever it is: small prints, an idea, an (failed) attempt, anything. We talk to find out what is this crazy experience of holding a book, looking at it, reading it, loving and cursing it. We talk to find out what working on a dummie can give you, is it freedom, is it prison? Whatever it is, I want to show you how to build on each page you imagine, or each page you make. I would be happy if in the end you bring some solutions home, or ways to get to solutions in your own time and space. M.B.

Digital book design by Caterina C. Fiorentino.
In order to optimize time and make it easier the use of the layout program, we recommend to bring images also in digital files with the following characteristics: tiff format, dimension of 29,7 cm on the long side, 150 dpi.

We suggest to bring your own laptop if you have one.

The workshop will be in English with a simultaneous translation in Italian.

Location:
Saturday : s.t. foto libreria galleria - Via degli Ombrellari n.25 - 00193 Roma
www.stsenzatitolo.it - info@stsenzatitolo.it - tel/fax +39 06 64760105

Sunday: Obiettivo Granieri - Via San Remo n.3 - 00182 Roma

Schedule: saturday 10,30/18,30 - sunday 10,30/18,30

---

• 
• 
• 

---

Photographer Machiel Botman (1955, The Netherlands) is active in many fields. His work is of a personal nature, it simply aims to show his life. Botman's photography is intuitive, he collects his images without much plan, other than to understand their meaning afterwards. Half of Botman's work is the continuous composing of book dummies. These dummies end up in actual published books: Heartbeat (1994) was based on the photographs taken from 1978 to 1994, Rainchild (2004) was based on the photographs from 1994 to 2004. His new and still unpublished book One Tree is based on the photographs he has taken after 2005. Together these three books show a person, a photographer, and his life: his relationships, his child, friends, the places he travels to and the people he meets. It is a changing life, this becomes clear. Good things happen, the birth of his son and at the same time the not so good things happen, such as the passing of his mother. Botman includes his writings and his drawings in these books. His style is intimate, if you want you feel what he feels. It is also dark in meaning and dark in imagery.
The other part of Botman's work lies in curating exhibitions (lastly in 2008 and 2009 the two large retrospectives of Japanese photographers Miyako Ishiuchi and Kiyoshi Suzuki, both of which traveled through Europe) and creating beautiful object-catalogues to accompany these exhibitions. To teach photographic workshops with the emphasis on finding context for the work of students and the making of bookdummies. In Italy Botman has taught with TPW, in New York with The New School University, in Perth with John Curtin University.
Machiel Botman is represented by Gitterman Gallery in New York, Galerie VU in Paris and Kahmann Gallery in Amsterdam. He lives in Maremma, Italy and he does his own prints in Heemstede, The Netherlands.

----
On May 19th Machiel Botman will interview in a public conference Rinko Kawauchi, who will give a workshop on photobook composition from May 19th to 23rd at ISFCI in Rome. www.treterzi.org - www.isfci.com
----
Machiel Botman will be at Fotografia Europea - Reggio Emilia 2010 with an exhibition opening on May 7th and he will give a workshop on how to build up a photobook dummy from May 8th to 16th. For further informations: www.fotografiaeuropea.it

---

Caterina C.Fiorentino (1966 Naples), architect and teacher of Visual Communication and Concept design. Among her publications: "On the tracks of Valentine" in Linea Grafica, 2003; "InterAction design and brand project" in O. Zerlenga, "From graphics to infographics. New representations in the project of product and communication", Claudio Grenzi Editore 2007, "Staging. Forms of narration/representation", Claudio Grenzi Editore 2008.