MARK POWER: "THE LAYERED LANDSCAPE: COAST, LAND, CITY, HISTORY"

5-DAY DOCUMENTARY PRACTICE WORKSHOP IN SAINT-MALO, BRITTANY, FRANCE

REGISTRATIONS ARE CLOSED.

MARK POWER :”THE LAYERED LANDSCAPE: COAST, LAND, CITY, HISTORY”, OCTOBER 27-31, 2025, SAINT-MALO, BRITTANY, FRANCE

Join us and acclaimed Magnum photographer Mark Power in stunning Saint-Malo, France (a 2h fast train ride from Paris) for a beautiful fall week together pushing the boundaries of contemporary documentary practice, exploring the complex layers of this unique coastal location!

Also known as “The Cité Corsaire”, Saint-Malo is a characterful, history-filled walled port city located on Brittany’s Emerald Coast that is world renowned for its museum grade “intra muros” architecture (the old town behind the ramparts), rich nautical culture and legacy (famed discoverers and privateers alike!), and invigorating landscapes.

The fall’s “Grandes Marées” (some of the highest tide variations in Europe) make it a particularly exciting time to visit and witness first-hand waves washing over the wooden breakwaters, and the scenic “Sillon” promenade’s seawall outside the city.

 

DESCRIPTION

The workshop will explore strategies of making work in an unfamiliar location, as you experience the unique character of Saint-Malo (it’s Genius Loci) and its relationship to history, memory, and the photographic canon of photographing ‘place’.

You’ll be encouraged to research and pursue a specific idea of your own choosing, developed in consultation with Mark. If making work in a challenging, assignment-like situation appeals more to your circumstances, you’ll also have the option to join a “Map Project” restricting your photographic perimeter at random. We’ll spend time discussing the process of building projects over a longer term. You’ll learn strategies for editing and (in particular) sequencing, and we’ll explore book publishing and exhibiting. The workshop will encourage you to think in fresh and innovative ways and to make work that gets you out of your own, personal comfort zone.

On the last day, we’ll run your fresh Saint-Malo work through an intensive series of editing and sequencing exercises for the purpose of publishing a final newsprint journal produced by FotoFilmic as a tangible keepsake for our photographic adventures. Hard copies will be mailed to all participants early in the new year.

 

All images: © Mark Power. Top banner image: BISCAY, Saturday 27 July 1996. Northerly 4 or 5, backing northwesterly 3. Mainly fair. Moderate with fog patches in north, from the book The Shipping Forecast (1996, Art Books Intl Ltd, 1st edition; GOST Books, 2022, 2nd edition)

Pearsall. Texas. January 2018 (Good Morning, America)

Ohio. Cleveland. November 2017 (Good Morning, America)

USA. Missouri. Fortuna. March 2022 (Good Morning, America)

Broward County. Florida. October 2012 (Good Morning, America)

SCHEDULE

PRE-WORKSHOP GROUP MEETING (Online, Sunday, October 5, 5-6 pm GMT)

Based on their research, participants present Mark their Saint-Malo project proposals outlining the specific range of subjects and locations that they wish to focus on during the workshop. Those eager to challenge their working methods even more can also choose to join’s Mark’s “Map Project”, which will randomly assign them a circumscribed area of the Saint-Malo and vicinity map where to solely focus their attention and make new work.

DAY 1 (Monday, October 27)

9:00 am – 2:00 pm: workshop presentation by Mark + participants introduce their background and current work

Afternoon: participants start photographing

DAY 2 (Tuesday, October 28)

9:00 am – noon: Lecture #1 by Mark on his groundbreaking books, including The Shipping Forecast, 26 Different Endings, and Good Morning, America

Afternoon: participants continue photographing

DAY 3 (Wednesday, October 29)

9:00 am – 3:00 pm: group critique of Saint-Malo work produced so far

Afternoon: participants continue photographing

DAY 4 (Thursday, October 30)

9:00 am – noon: Lecture #2 by Mark on sequencing, with particular reference to his latest publication, Fashion, and other books.

1:00 – 3:00 pm (optional): additional review time for new work made since the group critique (thinking ahead of the next day’s final edits)

Afternoon: participants continue photographing

DAY 5 (Friday, October 31)

10:00 am – 5:00 pm (all day minus lunch break and other small breaks as needed): Final Saint-Malo work edits for the workshop’s newsprint publication. Early evening farewell drinks.

ABOUT MARK POWER

@marktpower
https://www.markpower.co.uk/

Mark Power’s complex, meticulously crafted images – usually made with large format cameras – have earned him a reputation as one of the forerunners of British photography. For many years his work has been seen in numerous galleries and museums across the world, and is in several important collections, both public and private. However, Power considers himself to be primarily a book maker, and to date he has published fifteen: The Shipping Forecast (1996), a poetic response to the esoteric language of daily maritime weather reports; Superstructure (2000), a documentation of the construction of London’s Millennium Dome; The Treasury Project (2002), about the restoration of a nineteenth-century historical monument: 26 Different Endings (2007), which depicts those landscapes unlucky enough to fall just off the edge of the London A-Z, a map which could be said to define the boundaries of the British capital; The Sound of Two Songs (2010), the culmination of his five year project set in contemporary Poland following her accession to the European Union; Mass (2013), an investigation into the power and wealth of the Polish Catholic church; Die Mauer ist Weg! (2014), about chance and choice when confronted, accidentally, with a major news event – in this case the fall of the Berlin Wall; Destroying the Laboratory for the Sake of the Experiment (2016), a collaboration with the poet Daniel Cockrill about pre-Brexit England; Icebreaker (2018) which documents two Finnish ships operating in the Bay of Bothnia; Terre a l’Amende (2021), the result of an artist-in-residency programme in the Channel Island of Guernsey, and the five-book, work-in-progress series, Good Morning, America, Volumes I (2018), II (2019), III (2020) and IV (2023), with Volume V to be published early 2026) A revised and much-expanded version of his first book, The Shipping Forecast was published in 2022, and Fashion, a carefully sequenced compendium of Power’s construction pictures, will be available this summer. Power taught at the University of Brighton from 1992 until 2017, first as a Senior Lecturer, then as the Professor of Photography. He joined Magnum as a nominee in 2002, becoming a full member in 2007. He lives in Brighton, on the south coast of England, with his wife Jo and their dog Kodak.