Attend a Masterclass

Sit down in front of your computer at 17:00 CET on 8 November (today, and I think that’s 16.00 GMT) and you can enjoy one of the renowned World Press Photo Joop Swart master-classes. It’s a great privilege to be one of the 12 promising young photojournalists invited to attend these classes which are given by some of the best press photographers from around the world, and this is the first occasion on which the lecture given there has been made available live to a wider audience. The address is: http://worldpressphoto.kanaal11.tv

Don’t worry if you miss it live – you will also be able to see the 1.5hr session at the site at any time from Nov 9 – Nov 15. To view the programme you will need a broadband connection and Windows Media Player, version 6.4 or later.

Giving the lecture is David Burnett. He graduated from Colorado College in political science in 1968, starting in photography the previous year as an intern at Time Magazine. He became a freelance for Time, and then for Life, at first in the USA, and then covering the Vietnam war. When Life folded , he joined the French agency Gamma. In 1976 founded the New York based Contact Press Images with Robert Pledge. He has worked in over 75 countries and as well as having his photojournalism published in all the major US and European general feature magazines and has also worked on advertising campaigns for some major clients, including Kodak and the US Army.

In 1973, Burnett, together with Raymond Depardon and Charles Gerretsen, covered the coup in Chile for Gamma, winning the ‘Robert Capa Award’ of the Overseas Press Club of America, which is given for the “best published photographic reporting from abroad requiring exceptional courage and enterprise. In 1979 he won the World Press Photo of the Year. He’s also been Magazine Photographer of the Year in the Pictures of the Year competition, and gained many other awards.

Some of his more interesting pictures in recent years – including a splendid image of Al Gore campaigning in 2001 – were taken with a cheap plastic Holga camera (though he did also shoot more conventionally in colour – and Newsweek apparently didn’t want to look at his black and white work.) You can see a very wide range of his work on this own web site.

One Response to “Attend a Masterclass”

  1. Well, if you tried to watch this, I hope you had more success than me, as despite my browser informing me most of the time that I had ‘perfect reception’ I seldom got more than a few words without a break, and found it impossible to make sense of the lecture.

    I imagine this means there were too many of us trying to watch, and I’ll perhaps try again tomorrow morning, when America is still asleep.

    Peter

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.