SIMON NORFOLK: “TAKING A STEP UP”
SIMON NORFOLK: “TAKING A STEP UP”
APRIL 17-21, 2023, BOWEN ISLAND, BC
I’m pleased to be able to offer a five-day workshop through FOTOFILMIC on beautiful Bowen Island near Vancouver from Monday April 17 to Friday April 21, 2023. I rarely come to North America, I hope you’ll like to join me.
In this workshop we will discuss, share & learn about the development of your long-term photographic projects. I’m good at visual narrative and storytelling and I want to help with crafting your stories. Together we’ll work on (re)conceptualizing and clarifying your project ideas; making them sharper and more effective. I get shown a lot of work that is pretty good but not often do I see work that is really special. I think a lot of us can get up to a fairly good level (even a fairly good professional level) but don’t know how to make that final step up to getting published/assigned/taken on by galleries etc. How do you give your project that extra sophistication, the sharpness that makes it stand out from the rest, the lucidity that wins awards or gets published in top-flight outlets?
I want to show you how I craft my projects and how I layer them up with ideas to make them multifaceted. I’ll show you a little (very little) of my old work, some newer, unseen projects but more importantly I’ll show you how I research and clarify an idea and the influences I bring to bear not just on what I photograph but why I make my pictures look the way they do.
The class is aimed at photographers with some experience, but are now ready to shift up to a higher level. Ideally, you’ve begun or have the sketch for a larger body of work or a more serious project.
We’ll also go out shooting one late evening followed by a very early morning (that’s the routine I stick to when I’m on assignment) and we’ll have the chance to review the work made.
Don’t underestimate how much you will learn from the rest of the class; I’ll try to stream the entrants so that everybody is about the same level but also everybody has something to teach each other. The class will be limited to just 12 and I expect it to be friendly and supportive as well as lively and challenging.
Simon Norfolk
Schedule: Meets in-person at FotoFilmic on Bowen Island on Monday April 17, Tuesday April 18, Wednesday April 19, Thursday April 20 and Friday April 21 from 9am to 5pm (hours subject to change).
This program is limited to 12 participants.
© Cover image: Simon Norfolk, The Lewis Glacier, Mt. Kenya, 1963 (A), 2014. From the series When I am Laid in Earth.

© Simon Norfolk, Controlled destruction by the Halo Trust of US cluster bombs dropped in error on the civilian village and orchards of Aqa Ali-Khuja on the Shomali Plain, north of Kabul, May 2002. From the series Afghanistan: Chronotopia.

© Simon Norfolk, Former teahouse next to the wreckage of the old, Soviet-era ‘Afghan Exhibition of Economic and Social Achievements’ in Kabul. Balloons were illegal under the Taliban, December 2001. From the series Afghanistan: Chronotopia.

© Simon Norfolk, BBC Relay Station, 2003. From the series Ascension Island: The Panopticon.

© Simon Norfolk + Klaus Thymann, Shroud 8, 2018. From the series Shroud.
ABOUT SIMON NORFOLK